Shields Ready

Overview

CISA’s Shields Ready campaign is about making resilience during incidents a reality by taking action before incidents occur. As a companion to CISA’s Shields Up initiative, Shields Ready drives action at the intersection of critical infrastructure resilience and national preparedness. This campaign is designed to help all critical infrastructure stakeholders to take action to enhance security and resilience—from industry and businesses to government entities at all levels, and even individuals by providing recommendations, products, and resources to increase individual and collective resilience for different risk contexts and conditions. 

By taking steps in advance of an incident, organizations, individuals, and communities are better positioned to quickly adjust their posture for heightened risk conditions, in turn helping to prevent incidents, to reduce impact, and get things back to normal—or better—as quickly as possible. Being part of the resilience journey makes for more resilient people, organizations, and communities. 

Current Threat Landscape

Today’s challenges are dynamic and rapidly evolving as technology advances. State-sponsored cyber threats from nation-state cyber actors like Iran, North Korea, People's Republic of China, and Russia, the mounting risks of severe weather, and the uncertainties of artificial intelligence demand unwavering vigilance and adaptability. 

A shifting geopolitical landscape has intensified national security concerns and has shown how targeting critical infrastructure can be a primary attack vector for weakening a country’s ability to protect itself, and its citizens. This can occur both in a conflict setting, as well as through indirect, long-term foreign interference campaigns.  

Additionally, the interconnectivity of critical infrastructure also creates risks because a disruption in one place can ripple near and far. We can and must be more resilient to the range of changing risk conditions that threaten critical infrastructure and the communities, and nation, it supports. 

Complicating matters, the boundaries between the nation’s cyber and physical infrastructure are increasingly blurred. The convergence of cyber-physical technologies and systems that deliver our critical functions — from manufacturing to healthcare to transportation and beyond — means that single events can manifest in the loss or degradation of service across multiple industries. 

All of these factors demand a greater focus on resilience. 

Key Steps to Building Resilience

Resilience is the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing risk conditions and withstand or recover rapidly from disruptions, regardless of cause. Critical infrastructure entities and other organizations can be more resilient (or Resolve to be Resilient) by integrating certain practices that will make themselves secure, resilient, and able to bounce back quickly and build back stronger from an incident: