Critical Infrastructure Protection in Homeland Security: Defending a Networked Nation, 2nd Edition

Preface

When Paul Stockton returned from the U.S. Department of Justice meeting in Washington, DC, and invited me to design the first graduate level curriculum for the first Homeland Security program at the Naval Postgraduate School, I had no idea it would take me on a decade-long journey. It was February 2002—a few short months after the 9/11 Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil—and I had just returned from a foray into corporate America. I didn't know anything about homeland security, but then, hardly anyone did. Nonetheless, Paul and I developed a 12-course curriculum, got it approved by the Academic Council, and deployed the first-ever homeland security Master's Degree program in America 9 short months later. The Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS)—www.CHDS.us—was a huge success, and continues to be the premier program in the field, today.

From the beginning, protection of infrastructure was a centerpiece of homeland security. After all, if you don't have food, water, energy, power, and communication, you don't have a country. The extreme vulnerability to accidental, weather-related, and human-instigated attacks on food, water, energy, power, transportation, and public health systems was understood years before 9/11, but nothing was done about it. Americans were not consciously aware of the criticality of their infrastructure until the devastation of September 11, 2001. Even then, public concern played second fiddle to the Global War on Terrorism. But the criticality ...