During his remarks at the recent Vanderbilt Summit on Conflict and Emerging Threats, FBI Director Christopher Wray noted, “The private sector owns the vast majority of our critical infrastructure, so it plays a central defensive role, and also generates vital information about what adversaries are doing - or preparing to do - against us. But the first thing private industry can bring to the table is vigilance because everything we do in the government and law enforcement space has to be combined with the public’s role in being more discerning and more cyber-literate.”

The vast majority, 85%, of America’s critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, representing vital national security and economic interests, public health and safety, technology, and innovation. In an era of unprecedented threats from nation-state actors and cyber criminals, collaboration with private industry will bolster our nation’s defenses.

Public/private partnership with the American business community, fostering collaboration, education, and information sharing has proven to advance national security. During the Vanderbilt Summit, Director Wray also noted, “We’ve seen the best outcomes in situations where a company made a habit of reaching out to their local FBI field office even before there was any indication of a problem because that put everyone on the same page and contributed to the company’s readiness.”  

Building a network of trusted advisors is critical for security leaders across the private and public sectors. The ability to collaborate across different security stakeholders, including corporate security directors, CSOs, CISOs, cybersecurity and information technology professionals, entrepreneurs, emergency managers, financial services executives, healthcare professionals, military and government officials, academia, and much more, “is a game-changer for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the large security budgets of their enterprise counterparts,” said Tom Markert, President, InfraGard National Members Alliance.

The opportunity to build relationships with local FBI field offices and attend valuable FBI briefings and presentations will help to ensure that organizations can protect themselves and their organizations from threats.

This left-of-boom interaction is critically important, fostering situational awareness on emerging threats and ensuring that points of contact with the FBI already exist should a crime or incident occur. Every field office has at least one employee (usually a special agent) designated as a Private Sector Coordinator to serve as a resource for area businesses.  

A first step toward building these partnerships is the InfraGard program, the FBI’s largest public/private partnership with the American business community. InfraGard is jointly managed by the FBI Office of Private Sector and InfraGard National Members Alliance (INMA), an FBI-affiliated independent nonprofit organization that represents the private sector component of the InfraGard program. Over the past 28 years, InfraGard has grown to over 36,000 members and 70+ local InfraGard Members Alliances nationwide, each affiliated with one of the FBI’s 56 Field Offices. Local events are a source of peer-to-peer collaboration and education for security stakeholders.

“In today’s rapidly changing world, companies face a myriad of different threats,’’ remarked Supervisory Special Agent Andy Sekela, InfraGard Program Manager, FBI Office of Private Sector. “InfraGard provides members with key information to help protect themselves and their organizations from these threats. I strongly encourage anyone who works in critical infrastructure to apply to InfraGard.”