As part of the Department of Homeland Security oversight on critical infrastructure in USA, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on March 19, 2020, released a memorandum,
MEMORANDUM ON IDENTIFICATION OF ESSENTIAL CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WORKERS DURING COVID-19 RESPONSE
That gives advisory (not mandatory) guidance on which businesses and sectors are considered critical, and which workers by task might be considered critical essential workers. Cybersecurity is included in many of them. I recommend getting the entire document (linked above), but here are security-related highlights:
Healthcare / Public Heallh
- Workers performing cybersecurity functions at healthcare and public health facilities, who cannot practically work remotely
- Workers performing security, incident management, and emergency operations functions at or on behalf of healthcare entities including healthcare coalitions, who cannot practically work remotely
Law Enforcement / Public Safety / First Responders
- Workers – including contracted vendors -- who maintain digital systems infrastructure supporting law
enforcement and emergency service operations.
Energy: Electric industry
- IT and OT technology staff – for EMS (Energy Management Systems) and Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition (SCADA) systems, and utility data centers; Cybersecurity engineers; cybersecurity risk management
Information technology
- Workers who support command centers, including, but not limited to Network Operations Command Center, Broadcast Operations Control Center and Security Operations Command Center
- Data center operators, including system administrators, HVAC & electrical engineers, security personnel, IT managers, data transfer solutions engineers, software and hardware engineers, and database administrators
- Workers responding to cyber incidents involving critical infrastructure, including medical facilities, SLTT
governments and federal facilities, energy and utilities, and banks and financial institutions, and other critical infrastructure categories and personnel
Financial services
- Workers responding to cyber incidents involving critical infrastructure, including medical facilities, SLTT
governments and federal facilities, energy and utilities, and banks and financial institutions, and other critical infrastructure categories and personnel
Defense Industrial Base
- Workers who support the essential services required to meet national security commitments to the federal government and U.S. Military. These individuals, include but are not limited to, aerospace; mechanical and software engineers, manufacturing/production workers; IT support; security staff; security personnel; intelligence support, aircraft and weapon system mechanics and maintainers
Craig
