Two plenary speakers spoke early this morning. Dirk Mauer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense of the Crisis Management and Defense Support of Civil Authorities, detailed the ongoing development of the DoD’s Defense Critical Infrastructure Program. The DCIP ensures the availability of assets deemed necessary for DoD missions and operations. It focuses on domestic and foreign assets and their dependencies on one another. It is not possible or feasible to protect the entire critical infrastructure, so the DCIP lays out a model of identifying, prioritizing, and mitigating risk of critical infrastructure assets essential to the DoD. The DCIP aims to collaborate with all of the federal departs, conduct vulnerability assessments, and promote risk management. The DCIP is a new iteration of a ten-year critical infrastructure program in the DoD. In a Q&A immediately following his presentation, Dirk explained how the DCIP will work closely with the risk analysis and management programs in the DHS. The DoD adheres to the DHS’s national framework for critical infrastructure protection.

Cathleen Berrick, Director of Homeland Security and Justice Team in the Government Accountability Office spoke next on a GAO forum on risk management practices. The forum brought together key players in risk management from the private and government sectors to address homeland security risk management problems and challenges. The forum found that the top three issues that needed to be solved were improving risk communication, overcoming political obstacles, and improving strategic thinking. By the end of the forum there were talks about a special advising committee on risk management to Congress. You can read the complete findings of the forum on the GAO-08-627SP document.

There are still three technical sessions left and also the SARMA networking reception this evening. At the reception the SRA club will be meeting Edward Joepeck, the President of SARMA, to talk about how the College of IST and SARMA can work together to better educate the future generation of risk mangers.

More coverage later today.