Risk in the 21st century results from a complex mix of manmade and naturally occurring threats and hazards, including terrorist attacks, accidents, natural disasters, and other emergencies. Within this context, our critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) may be directly exposed to the events themselves or indirectly exposed as a result of the dependencies and interdependencies among CIKR. Within the CIKR protection mission area, national priorities must include preventing catastrophic loss of life and managing cascading, disruptive impacts on the U.S. and global economies across multiple threat scenarios. Achieving this goal requires a strategy that appropriately balances resiliency – a traditional American strength in adverse times – with focused, risk-informed prevention, protection, and preparedness activities so that we can manage and reduce the most serious risks that we face. These concepts represent the pillars of our National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) and its 18 supporting Sector-Specific Plans (SSPs). The plans are carried out in practice by an integrated network of Federal departments and agencies, State and local government agencies, private sector entities, and a growing number of regional consortia – all operating together within a largely voluntary CIKR protection framework. This multidimensional public-private sector partnership is the key to success in this inherently complex mission area. Building this partnership under the NIPP has been a major accomplishment to date and has facilitated closer cooperation and a trusted relationship in and across the 18 CIKR sectors. Integrating multi-jurisdictional and multi-sector authorities, capabilities, and resources is a unified but flexible approach that can also be tailored to specific sector and regional risk landscapes and operating environments is the path to successfully enhancing our Nation's CIKR protection. The NIPP meets the requirements that the President set for in Homeland Security Directive 7 (HSPD-7), Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritization, and Protection, and provides the overarching approach for integrating the Nation's many CIKR protection initiatives into a single national effort. It set for a comprehensive risk management framework and clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the Department of Homeland Security; Federal Sector-Specific Agencies; and other Federal, State, regional, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector partners implementing the NIPP.