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The cybersecurity of critical infrastructures is an essential topic within national and international security as 16 critical infrastructure sectors touch various aspects of American society. Because the failure to provide adequate cybersecurity controls within the critical infrastructure sectors renders the country open to an attack that could have a debilitating effect on security, national public health, safety, and economic security, this matter is so vital that there is the Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 21 Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience advances a national policy to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning and resilient critical infrastructure. An organization identified as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the mission to be the risk advisor for the United States (US). Other organizations, such as the National Security Agency (NSA), have approved a specific Knowledge Unit (KU) to address cybersecurity for critical infrastructures associated with doctoral-level granting programs. To address this challenge, it is necessary to identify threats better and defend against them while mitigating risks to an acceptable level. Only then can a nation build a more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future while defending against present-day bad actors as cyberwarfare, cyber espionage, and cybersecurity attacks are the modern-day threats that need to be addressed in planning, designing, implementation, and maintenance. Therefore, the researchers developed a case study reviewing threats against different sectors defined in the PPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Effective communication during disasters ensures that the public realizes the urgency of the crisis. The present research aims to identify factors that influence the perceived urgency and severity of a chronic water crisis in the Southwest United States that may lead to a future megadrought. Findings show knowledge about the interdependence of water and power infrastructures, vividness of the dreadful consequences of droughts, and time of crisis jointly increase perceived urgency and severity of the crisis, thus suggesting three directions for future research. First, knowledge-based interventions may be most effective when the knowledge presented is not already salient. Second, vividness of the crisis could increase the perceived urgency of a crisis. Third, design of future interventions should take into account individuals' competing needs to satisfy desires for consuming resources versus conserving them; individuals may be less amenable to sustainability interventions when their desire for resources is intense. Highlights • Psychological factors influence the perceived urgency of a chronic water crisis. • Providing vivid images of declining water levels increased crisis perceptions. • Presenting knowledge about the interdependence of water and power supply matters. • Timing of data collection affected crisis perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorism casualties in the U.S. have been caused primarily by attacks on facilities. In earthquake, hurricane, infectious disease outbreaks, hazmat releases, and other disasters, peoples' safety often depends on the facilities they occupy. Yet strategic homeland security documents issued by the White House and the US Department of Homeland Security focus on the protection of "infrastructures," understood to consist mainly of utility systems, and rarely on facilities per se. For other than federal office buildings and infrastructure nodes, federal plans barely acknowledge the urgent task of protecting civilian facilities. This article gives evidence for the importance of facilities to homeland security. Are facilities so varied and numerous that it would be cost prohibitive to implement a national protection strategy? The article argues that it would not be. Economies of scope in multi-hazard protection, existing legal and accreditation frameworks, new possibilities for integrating information systems, and the nation's many facility-safety professionals are all valuable resources on which to build. The U.S. should identify facility protection as a distinctive field of homeland security policy and proceed by supporting decentralized initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]