Critical infrastructure

The United States' national critical infrastructure is composed of public and private institutions in the sectors of agriculture, food, water, public health, emergency services, government, defense industrial base, information and telecommunications, energy, transportation, banking and finance, chemicals and hazardous materials, and postal and shipping. Cyberspace is their nervous system &mdash; the control system of our country. Cyberspace is composed of hundreds of thousands of interconnected computers, servers, routers, switches, and fiber optic cables that allow the critical infrastructures to work. Thus, the healthy functioning of cyberspace is essential to the U.S. economy and its national security.