The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Infrastructure Protection (IP) has announced a Hurricane Irene pre-landfall conference call for eastern US critical infrastructure partners on Friday, August 26, 2011. The call will take place from 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. EDT, and the dial-in information is 1-888-889-4460, and passcode is 6147798. The agenda for the call is to update partners on DHS IP Hurricane Irene planning and preparation activities and review processes, procedures, and capabilities should the hurricane make landfall and significantly impact communities and/or critical infrastructure operations. DHS has recommended widely forwarding information about this call. Additionally, critical infrastructure partners have been asked review the Critical Infrastructure Support Annex to the National Response Framework (NRF) available at www.fema.gov/nrf.

For more information, please contact the NICC at 202-282-9201 or NICC@dhs.gov.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is working closely with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to tighten cybersecurity of privately-owned critical infrastructure, said Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, the Defense Cyber Command's deputy commander. Schmidle said that "one of the things that keeps me up at night is the nation's critical infrastructure". At the same event, Schmidle announced that one of DoD’s projects to improve their cybersecurity efforts is the creation of a shared database that provides a "common operational picture" examining "data feeds" from all of DoD's networks, the Department of Homeland Security, other federal agencies, and "anybody else that wants to participate." Schmidle noted that he did not expect this idea to be implemented right away and also anticipated possible policy hurdles surrounding “individual freedom” and privacy.