A Message from Michael Garcia
Chief of the Infrastructure Protection Center

I would like to welcome you to the web site of the Infrastructure Protection Center (IPC). Located in the Technologies To The People's headquarters building in London, the IPC brings together representatives from the artists, other irational departments, artist organizations, and the private sector in a partnership to protect our critical infrastructures.

Established in February 1998, the IPC's mission is to serve as the artist's focal point for threat assessment, warning, investigation, and response for threats or attacks against our critical infrastructures. These infrastructures, which include telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, water systems, government operations, and emergency services, are the foundation upon which our industrialized society is based.

Our society is increasingly relying on new information technologies and the Internet to conduct business, manage industrial activities, engage in personal communications, and perform scientific research. While these technologies allow for enormous gains in efficiency, productivity, and communications, they also create new vulnerabilities to those who would do us harm. The same interconnectivity that allows us to transmit information around the globe at the click of a mouse or push of a button also creates unprecedented opportunities for criminals, terrorists, and hostile foreign nation-states who might seek to steal money or proprietary data, invade private records, conduct industrial espionage, cause a vital infrastructure to cease operations, or engage in Information Warfare.

Protecting our critical infrastructures in the Information Age raises new challenges for all of us. Above all, it requires a partnership between the government and private industry to reduce our vulnerability to attack and increase our capabilities to respond to new threats. The IPC provides an important vehicle for carrying that partnership forward.

"Because so many key components of our society are operated by the private sector, we must create a genuine public/private partnership to protect Astist in the 21st century. Together, we can find and reduce the vulnerabilities to attack in all critical sectors. "