New cybersecurity industry alliance aims to lead US critical infrastructure protection
New cybersecurity industry alliance aims to lead US critical infrastructure protection
Publish Date: 2026-05-11 11:33:00
Source Domain: www.cybersecuritydive.com
As some of the organizations that run essential services in the U.S. lose faith in the federal government’s willingness and ability to help them, a few of the biggest critical infrastructure operators are taking matters into their own hands to improve coordination — and prepare for a major crisis.
In February, a coalition that includes corporate titans JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, AT&T and Berkshire Hathaway Energy launched the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure (ACI), vowing to take the lead in helping infrastructure sectors work more closely together to understand and mitigate the shared cybersecurity risks they face. Reading between the lines, the message was clear: The critical infrastructure community, increasingly alarmed at the Trump administration’s retreat from decades-long partnerships, is trying to fill the growing void of coordination and leadership.
Government budget cuts and personnel losses have made it much harder for agencies to support and advise infrastructure operators, and the White House has encouraged states to take over historically federal responsibilities for protecting local utilities. Amid those changes, infrastructure firms like the ones that founded the ACI say the private sector must step up.
Ben Flatgard, the ACI’s chairman, noted that the private sector manages the vast majority of U.S. infrastructure. “We can’t outsource that responsibility or the risk management practices that come along with it,” he said in an interview with Cybersecurity Dive. “We need to own the solution for that as well.”
Many experts say that while the government must retain a leadership role in protecting critical infrastructure, it’s a good sign that private companies want to assume more of the burden.
“If the private sector does not step up to self-organize,” said Brian Harrell, a former assistant director for infrastructure security at the Cybersecurity and…
