‘CI Fortify’ Is the New Road Map for State and Local Resilience
‘CI Fortify’ Is the New Road Map for State and Local Resilience
Publish Date: 2026-05-10 05:23:00
Source Domain: www.govtech.com
This past week the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced the release of its CI Fortify project, aiming to help critical infrastructure owners and operators defend themselves against hackers and maintain continuity during a geopolitical conflict.
The CISA portal describes the program this way: “‘CI Fortify’ is an allied initiative bolstering public health and safety, defense critical infrastructure, continuity of the economy, and national security by ensuring operators are prepared to sustain essential operations during a geopolitical conflict. For planning purposes, operators should assume that in a conflict scenario third-party connections — such as telecommunications, internet, vendors, service providers, and upstream dependencies — will be unreliable and that threat actors will have some access to the OT network. Isolation and Recovery are emergency planning objectives that can mitigate this threat within the next few years.”
Here’s a related quote from Acting CISA Director Nick Anderson: “In a geopolitical crisis, the critical infrastructure organizations Americans rely on must be able to continue delivering — at a minimum — crucial services. They must be able to isolate vital systems from harm, continue operating in that isolated state, and quickly recover any systems that an adversary may successfully compromise.”
DIGGING DEEPER
Going a bit further, you are probably wondering what is meant by “Isolation” and “Recovery.” Here are those details from CISA: “Isolation includes proactively disconnecting from third-party and business networks to prevent OT cyber impacts and sustain essential operations in a degraded communications…
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