Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21): Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience

In February 2013, the President issued Presidential Policy Directive 21, which explicitly calls for an update to the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP). The Policy Directive advances a national unity of effort to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient critical infrastructure.

PPD-21 identifies 16 critical infrastructure sectors and builds on the extensive work done to date to protect critical infrastructure, and describes a national effort to share threat information, reduce vulnerabilities, minimize consequences, and hasten response and recovery efforts related to critical infrastructure.

Three strategic imperatives drive the Federal approach to strengthen critical infrastructure security and resilience:
  1. Refine and clarify functional relationships across the Federal Government to advance the national unity of effort to strengthen critical infrastructure security and resilience;
  2. Enable effective information exchange by identifying baseline data and systems requirements for the Federal Government; and
  3. Implement an integration and analysis function to inform planning and operations decisions regarding critical infrastructure.