National Security Memorandum on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience – CISA

The NSM directs the agency to leverage its statutory responsibility to lead the national effort to understand, manage, and reduce risk to cyber and physical infrastructure by working across the interagency and further supporting the implementation of SRMA roles and responsibilities first articulated in the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). As the National Coordinator, CISA will coordinate the national effort to secure and protect critical infrastructure by coordinating with SRMAs, relevant departments and agencies, the private sector, and state, local, tribal, and territorial partners to reduce risk at scale. In this role, CISA will:   

• Work with SRMAs to fulfill their roles and responsibilities to implement national priorities. 
• Assess progress against national priorities and national resilience – and support efforts that measure and enhance the strength of critical infrastructure sectors and partnerships. 
• Identify and assess sector and cross-sector risk considering dependencies and interdependencies.  
• Assess sector and SRMA designations to inform recommendations to the President. 
• Recommend measures to protect the critical infrastructure of the United States. 
• Identify security and resilience functions that are necessary for effective public-private engagement with all critical infrastructure sectors. 
• Identify Systemically Important Entities informed by inputs from the Sector Risk Management Agencies. 

Implementing the duties of the National Coordinator will enable a “whole of government” approach providing the nation’s critical infrastructure owners and operators with more information, assessments and mitigation guidance faster with a comprehensive view of the security landscape.