• Employed or formerly employed within a critical infrastructure.
• At least 18 years of age on the date of application completion.
• U.S. Citizen (U.S. Citizen by birth as defined by 8 USC 1401-1409 or a U.S. Citizen by Naturalization as defined by 8 USC 1421-1459).
• Complete the InfraGard membership application form in its entirety.
• Agree to the InfraGard information-sharing policy, privacy act statement, agreement to hold harmless, and code of conduct.
• Consent to a security risk assessment and to periodic re-confirmation of the security risk assessment. The risk assessment is a process completed by the FBI which includes local, state, and federal criminal history, and other security-related database checks. Successful completion of the security risk assessment does not equate to a security clearance (InfraGard members are not given security clearances by the FBI).
• Applicant must complete the identity verification process through an authorized third party provider.

INFRAGARD MEMBERSHIP is for the owners, operators, and security directors and their staffs of the 16 U.S. national key asset and critical infrastructure sectors, which includes members of local, state, and federal law enforcement, as well as individuals who are involved in the security of and protected research at educational institutions. A description of the critical infrastructure sectors, and the disciplines included within each one, can be found on the main InfraGard website. The National Security Memorandum (NSM) on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, dated 30 April 2024 replaces Presidential Policy Directive (PPD)-21. (Click to see NSM)

• Chemical
  
  

  The Chemical Sector is an integral component of the U.S. economy that manufactures, stores, uses, and transports potentially dangerous chemicals upon which a wide range of other critical infrastructure sectors rely. Securing these chemicals against growing and evolving threats requires vigilance from both the private and public sector.

  The Department of Homeland Security—identified as the Chemical Sector Risk Management Agency (SRMA) in Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 21—leads the Chemical Sector’s public-private partnership and works with companies to develop tools and resources that enhance the sector’s security and resilience.

• Commercial Facilities

  Facilities associated with the Commercial Facilities Sector operate on the principle of open public access, meaning that the general public can move freely throughout these facilities without the deterrent of highly visible security barriers. The majority of the facilities in this sector are privately owned and operated, with minimal interaction with the Federal government and other regulatory entities.

  The Commercial Facilities Sector consists of the following eight subsectors:

  • Public Assembly (e.g., arenas, stadiums, aquariums, zoos, museums, convention centers);
  • Sports Leagues (e.g., professional sports leagues and federations);
  • Gaming (e.g., casinos);
  • Lodging (e.g., hotels, motels, conference centers);
  • Outdoor Events (e.g., theme and amusement parks, fairs, campgrounds, parades);
  • Entertainment and Media (e.g., motion picture studios, broadcast media);
  • Real Estate (e.g., office and apartment buildings, condominiums, mixed use facilities, self-storage); and
  • Retail (e.g., retail centers and districts, shopping malls).
• Communications

  The Communications Sector is an integral component of the U.S. economy, underlying the operations of all businesses, public safety organizations, and government. Presidential Policy Directive 21 identifies the Communications Sector as critical because it provides an “enabling function” across all critical infrastructure sectors. Over the last 25 years, the sector has evolved from predominantly a provider of voice services into a diverse, competitive, and interconnected industry using terrestrial, satellite, and wireless transmission systems. The transmission of these services has become interconnected; satellite, wireless, and wireline providers depend on each other to carry and terminate their traffic and companies routinely share facilities and technology to ensure interoperability.

  The private sector, as owners and operators of the majority of communications infrastructure, is the primary entity responsible for protecting sector infrastructure and assets. Working with the federal government, the private sector is able to predict, anticipate, and respond to sector outages and understand how they might affect the ability of the national leadership to communicate during times of crisis, impact the operations of other sectors, and affect response and recovery efforts.

  The Communications Sector is closely linked to other sectors, including:

  • The Energy Sector provides power to run cellular towers, central offices, and other critical communications facilities;
  • The Information Technology Sector provides critical control systems and services, physical architecture and Internet infrastructure;
  • The Financial Services Sector relies on communications for the transmission of transactions and operations of financial markets; and
  • The Emergency Services Sector depends on communications for directing resources, coordinating response, alerting the public, and receiving emergency 911 calls.
• Critical Manufacturing

  The Critical Manufacturing Sector is crucial to the economic prosperity and continuity of the United States. A direct attack on or disruption of certain elements of the manufacturing industry could disrupt essential functions at the national level and across multiple critical infrastructure sectors.

  The Critical Manufacturing Sector identified the following industries to serve as the core of the sector:

  Primary Metal Manufacturing

  • Iron and Steel Mills and Ferro Alloy Manufacturing;
  • Alumina and Aluminum Production and Processing; and
  • Nonferrous Metal (except Aluminum) Production and Processing

  Machinery Manufacturing

  • Engine, Turbine, and Power Transmission Equipment Manufacturing

  Electrical Equipment, Appliance, and Component Manufacturing

  • Electrical Equipment Manufacturing

  Transportation Equipment Manufacturing

  • Vehicle Manufacturing
  • Aviation and Aerospace Product and Parts Manufacturing; and
  • Railroad Rolling Stock Manufacturing

  Products made by these manufacturing industries are essential in varying capacities to many other critical infrastructure sectors. The Critical Manufacturing Sector focuses on the identification, assessment, prioritization, and protection of nationally significant manufacturing industries within the sector that may be susceptible to manmade and natural disasters.

• Dams

  The Dams Sector is comprised of assets that include dam projects, hydropower generation facilities, navigation locks, levees, dikes, hurricane barriers, mine tailings and other industrial waste impoundments, and other similar water retention and water control facilities. The Dams Sector is a vital part of the nation's infrastructure and provides a wide range of economic, environmental, and social benefits, including hydroelectric power, river navigation, water supply, wildlife habitat, waste management, flood control, and recreation.

  There are over 82,000 dams in the United States; approximately 65 percent are privately owned and more than 85 percent are regulated by State Dam Safety Offices. The Dams Sector has interdependencies with a wide range of other sectors, including:

  • The Emergency Services Sector relies on Dams Sector assets for firefighting water supply, emergency water supply, and waterborne access in the event of a significant disaster;
  • The Energy Sector provides approximately 8 to 12 percent of the Nation’s power needs with hydropower dams;
  • The Food and Agriculture Sector utilizes Dams Sector assets as a source of water for irrigation and water management;
  • The Transportation Systems Sector uses dams and locks to manage navigable waters throughout inland waterways; and
  • The Water and Wastewater Systems Sector relies on Dams Sector assets to provide water to concentrated populations and commercial facilities in the United States.
• Defense Industrial Base

  The Defense Industrial Base Sector is the worldwide industrial complex that enables research and development, as well as design, production, delivery, and maintenance of military weapons systems, subsystems, and components or parts, to meet U.S. military requirements.

  The Defense Industrial Base partnership consists of Department of Defense components, more than 100,000 Defense Industrial Base companies and their subcontractors who perform under contract to the Department of Defense, companies providing incidental materials and services to the Department of Defense, and government-owned/contractor-operated and government-owned/government-operated facilities. Defense Industrial Base companies include domestic and foreign entities, with production assets located in many countries.

  The sector provides products and services that are essential to mobilize, deploy, and sustain military operations. The Defense Industrial Base Sector does not include the commercial infrastructure of providers of services such as power, communications, transportation, or utilities that the Department of Defense uses to meet military operational requirements. These commercial infrastructure assets are addressed by other Sector-Specific Agencies.

• Emergency Services

  The Emergency Services Sector (ESS) is a community of millions of highly-skilled, trained personnel, along with the physical and cyber resources, that provide a wide range of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery services during both day-to-day operations and incident response. The ESS includes geographically distributed facilities and equipment in both paid and volunteer capacities organized primarily at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels of government, such as city police departments and fire stations, county sheriff’s offices, Department of Defense police and fire departments, and town public works departments. The ESS also includes private sector resources, such as industrial fire departments, private security organizations, and private emergency medical services providers.

  The mission of the Emergency Services Sector is to save lives, protect property and the environment, assist communities impacted by disasters, and aid recovery during emergencies.

  Five distinct disciplines compose the ESS, encompassing a wide range of emergency response functions and roles:

  • Law Enforcement
  • Fire and Rescue Services
  • Emergency Medical Services
  • Emergency Management
  • Public Works

  The ESS also provides specialized emergency services through individual personnel and teams. These specialized capabilities may be found in one or more various disciplines, depending on the jurisdiction:

  • Tactical Teams (i.e., SWAT)
  • Hazardous Devices Team/Public Safety Bomb Disposal
  • Public Safety Dive Teams/Maritime Units
  • Canine Units
  • Aviation Units (i.e., police and medevac helicopters)
  • Hazardous Materials (i.e., HAZMAT)
  • Search and Rescue Teams
  • Public Safety Answering Points (i.e., 9-1-1 call centers)
  • Fusion Centers
  • Private Security Guard Forces
  • National Guard Civil Support
• Energy

  The U.S. energy infrastructure fuels the economy of the 21st century. Without a stable energy supply, health and welfare are threatened, and the U.S. economy cannot function. Presidential Policy Directive 21 identifies the Energy Sector as uniquely critical because it provides an “enabling function” across all critical infrastructure sectors.  More than 80 percent of the country's energy infrastructure is owned by the private sector, supplying fuels to the transportation industry, electricity to households and businesses, and other sources of energy that are integral to growth and production across the nation.

  The energy infrastructure is divided into three interrelated segments, including: electricity, petroleum, and natural gas. The U.S. electricity segment contains more than 6,413 power plants (this includes 3,273 traditional electric utilities and 1,738 nonutility power producers) with approximately 1,075 gigawatts of installed generation. Approximately 48 percent of electricity is produced by combusting coal (primarily transported by rail), 20 percent in nuclear power plants, and 22 percent by combusting natural gas. The remaining generation is provided by hydroelectric plants (6 percent), oil (1 percent), and renewable sources (solar, wind, and geothermal) (3 percent). The heavy reliance on pipelines to distribute products across the nation highlights the interdependencies between the Energy and Transportation Systems Sector.

  The reliance of virtually all industries on electric power and fuels means that all sectors have some dependence on the Energy Sector. The Energy Sector is well aware of its vulnerabilities and is leading a significant voluntary effort to increase its planning and preparedness. Cooperation through industry groups has resulted in substantial information sharing of best practices across the sector. Many sector owners and operators have extensive experience abroad with infrastructure protection and have more recently focused their attention on cybersecurity.

• Financial Services

  The Financial Services Sector represents a vital component of our nation's critical infrastructure. Large-scale power outages, recent natural disasters, and an increase in the number and sophistication of cyber attacks demonstrate the wide range of potential risks facing the sector. Financial institutions provide a broad array of products from the largest institutions with assets greater than one trillion dollars to the smallest community banks and credit unions. Whether an individual savings account, financial derivatives, credit extended to a large organization, or investments made to a foreign country, these products allow customers to:

  1. Deposit funds and make payments to other parties;
  2. Provide credit and liquidity to customers;
  3. Invest funds for both long and short periods; and
  4. Transfer financial risks between customers.

  Financial institutions are organized and regulated based on services provided by institutions. Within the sector, there are more than 18,800 federally insured depository institutions; thousands of providers of various investment products, including roughly 18,440 broker-dealer, investment adviser, and investment company complexes; providers of risk transfer products, including 7,948 domestic U.S. insurers; and many thousands of other credit and financing organizations.

• Food and Agriculture

  The Food and Agriculture Sector is almost entirely under private ownership and is composed of an estimated 2.2 million farms, 900,000 restaurants, and more than 400,000 registered food manufacturing, processing, and storage facilities. This sector accounts for roughly one-fifth of the nation's economic activity.

  The Food and Agriculture Sector has critical dependencies with many sectors, but particularly with the following:

  • Water and Wastewater Systems, for clean irrigation and processed water;
  • Transportation Systems, for movement of products and livestock;
  • Energy, to power the equipment needed for agriculture production and food processing; and
  • Financial Services, Chemical, and Dams.
• Government Facilities

  The Government Facilities Sector includes a wide variety of buildings, located in the United States and overseas, that are owned or leased by federal, state, local, and tribal governments. Many government facilities are open to the public for business activities, commercial transactions, or recreational activities while others that are not open to the public contain highly sensitive information, materials, processes, and equipment. These facilities include general-use office buildings and special-use military installations, embassies, courthouses, national laboratories, and structures that may house critical equipment, systems, networks, and functions. In addition to physical structures, the sector includes cyber elements that contribute to the protection of sector assets (e.g., access control systems and closed-circuit television systems) as well as individuals who perform essential functions or possess tactical, operational, or strategic knowledge.

  The Education Facilities Subsector covers pre-kindergarten through 12th grade schools, institutions of higher education, and business and trade schools. The subsector includes facilities that are owned by both government and private sector entities.

  The National Monuments and Icons Subsector encompasses a diverse array of assets, networks, systems, and functions located throughout the United States. Many National Monuments and Icons assets are listed in either the National Register of Historic Places or the List of National Historic Landmarks.

• Healthcare and Public Health

  The Healthcare and Public Health Sector protects all sectors of the economy from hazards such as terrorism, infectious disease outbreaks, and natural disasters. Because the vast majority of the sector's assets are privately owned and operated, collaboration and information sharing between the public and private sectors is essential to increasing resilience of the nation's Healthcare and Public Health critical infrastructure. Operating in all U.S. states, territories, and tribal areas, the sector plays a significant role in response and recovery across all other sectors in the event of a natural or manmade disaster. While healthcare tends to be delivered and managed locally, the public health component of the sector, focused primarily on population health, is managed across all levels of government: national, state, regional, local, tribal, and territorial.

  The Healthcare and Public Health Sector is highly dependent on fellow sectors for continuity of operations and service delivery, including: Communications, Emergency Services, Energy, Food and Agriculture, Information Technology, Transportation Systems, and Water and Wastewater Systems.

• Information Technology

  The Information Technology Sector is central to the nation's security, economy, and public health and safety. Businesses, governments, academia, and private citizens are increasingly dependent upon Information Technology Sector functions. These virtual and distributed functions produce and provide hardware, software, and information technology systems and services, and - in collaboration with the Communications Sector - the Internet. The sector's complex and dynamic environment makes identifying threats and assessing vulnerabilities difficult and requires that these tasks be addressed in a collaborative and creative fashion.

  Information Technology Sector functions are operated by a combination of entities - often owners and operators and their respective associations - that maintain and reconstitute the network, including the Internet. Although information technology infrastructure has a certain level of inherent resilience, its interdependent and interconnected structure presents challenges as well as opportunities for coordinating public and private sector preparedness and protection activities.

• Nuclear Reactors, Materials and Waste

  Nuclear power accounts for approximately 20 percent of the nation's electrical generation, provided by 104 commercial nuclear reactors licensed to operate at 65 nuclear power plants throughout the United States. The sector includes nuclear power plants; non-power nuclear reactors used for research, testing, and training; manufacturers of nuclear reactors or components; radioactive materials used primarily in medical, industrial, and academic settings; nuclear fuel cycle facilities; decommissioned nuclear power reactors; and the transportation, storage, and disposal of nuclear and radioactive waste.

  The sector is interdependent with other critical infrastructure sectors, including:

  • Chemical as a consumer of hazardous chemicals at fuel cycle facilities;
  • Energy as a supplier of electricity to the nation's electrical grid;
  • Healthcare and Public Health as a supplier of nuclear medicine, radiopharmaceuticals and in the sterilization of blood and surgical supplies; and
  • Transportation Systems through the movement of radioactive materials
• Transportation Systems

  The nation's transportation system quickly, safely, and securely moves people and goods through the country and overseas.

  The Transportation Systems Sector consists of seven key subsectors, or modes:

  • Aviation includes aircraft, air traffic control systems, and approximately 450 commercial airports and 19,000 additional airports, heliports, and landing strips. This mode includes civil and joint use military airports, heliports, short takeoff and landing ports, and seaplane bases.
  • Highway Infrastructure and Motor Carrier encompasses nearly 4 million miles of roadway, almost 600,000 bridges, and some 400 tunnels in 35 states. Vehicles include automobiles, motorcycles, trucks carrying hazardous materials, other commercial freight vehicles, motorcoaches, and school buses.
  • Maritime Transportation System consists of about 95,000 miles of coastline, 361 ports, 25,000 miles of waterways, 3.4 million square miles of Exclusive Economic Zone, and intermodal landside connections, which allow the various modes of transportation to move people and goods to, from, and on the water.
  • Mass Transit and Passenger Rail includes service by buses, rail transit (commuter rail, heavy rail--also known as subways or metros--and light rail, including trolleys and streetcars), long-distance rail--namely Amtrak and Alaska Railroad--and other, less common types of service (cable cars, inclined planes, funiculars, and automated guideway systems).
  • Pipeline Systems consist of vast networks of pipeline that traverse hundreds of thousands of miles throughout the country, carrying nearly all of the nation's natural gas and about 65 percent of hazardous liquids, as well as various chemicals. These include approximately 2.2 million miles of natural gas distribution pipelines, about 168,900 miles of hazardous liquid pipelines, and more than 109 liquefied natural gas processing and storage facilities.
  • Freight Rail consists of seven major carriers, hundreds of smaller railroads, over 140,000 miles of active railroad, over 1.3 million freight cars, and roughly 20,000 locomotives. Further, over 12,000 trains operate daily. The Department of Defense has designated 30,000 miles of track and structure as critical to mobilization and resupply of U.S. forces.
  • Postal and Shipping moves over 574 million messages, products, and financial transactions each day. Postal and shipping activity is differentiated from general cargo operations by its focus on letter or flat mail, publications, or small- and medium-size packages and by service from millions of senders to nearly 152 million destinations.
• Water and Wastewater Systems

  There are approximately 160,000 public drinking water systems and more than 16,000 publicly owned wastewater treatment systems in the United States. Approximately 84 percent of the U.S. population receives their potable water from these drinking water systems, and more than 75 percent of the U.S. population has its sanitary sewerage treated by these wastewater systems.

  The Water and Wastewater Systems Sector is vulnerable to a variety of attacks, including contamination with deadly agents, physical attacks such as the release of toxic gaseous chemicals and cyber attacks. If these attacks were realized, the result could be large numbers of illnesses or casualties and/or a denial of service that would also impact public health and economic vitality. Critical services such as firefighting and healthcare (hospitals), and other dependent and interdependent sectors, such as Energy, Food and Agriculture, and Transportation Systems, would suffer negative impacts from a denial of service in the Water and Wastewater Systems Sector.

The mission of InfraGard is to promote ongoing dialogue and timely communication between members and the FBI specifically concerning the security of, vulnerabilities in, and threats to critical infrastructure entities. InfraGard members are provided with information to assist them in protecting critical infrastructure assets. In turn, they are encouraged to provide information to the FBI, thereby facilitating its responsibilities to detect, deter, and investigate acts of terrorism and other crimes. Because of the focus and purpose of InfraGard, members must be affiliated with a critical infrastructure.