Motto | Partnership For Protection |
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Formation | 1996 |
Type | Non-profit organization |
Membership
|
54,677 |
Website | www.infragard.org |
InfraGard is a non-profit organization serving as a public-private partnership between U.S. businesses and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The organization is an information sharing and analysis effort serving the interests, and combining the knowledge base of, a wide range of private sector and government members. InfraGard is an association of individuals that facilitates information sharing and intelligence between businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to prevent hostile acts against the United States. InfraGard's mutual nondisclosure agreements among its members (individuals) and the FBI promotes trusted discussions of vulnerabilities and solutions that companies and individuals may be hesitant to place in the public domain and provide access to additional threat information from the FBI.
InfraGard began in the Cleveland, Ohio, Field Office in 1996, and has since expanded to become a national-level program, with InfraGard coordinators in every FBI field office. Originally, it was a local effort to gain support from the information technology industry and academia for the FBI's investigative efforts in the cyber arena, but it has since expanded to a much wider range of activities surrounding the nation's critical infrastructure.
The program expanded to other FBI Field Offices, and in 1998 the FBI assigned national program responsibility for InfraGard to the former National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) directed by RADM James B. Plehal USNR and to the FBI's Cyber Division in 2003. Since 2003, InfraGard Alliances and the FBI said that they have developed a TRUST-based public-private sector partnership to ensure reliability and integrity of information exchanged about various terrorism, intelligence, criminal, and security matters. It supports FBI priorities in the areas of counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence, and cybercrime.