Why FIR Exists

The Foundation for Infrastructure Resilience is a 501(c)(3) national security nonprofit. FIR exists because the United States has no systematic framework for preparing communities to survive an extended infrastructure failure — and because the threat of such a failure is confirmed, pre-positioned, and growing.

For twenty years, federal agencies have documented the vulnerability. The EMP Commission warned in 2004 and again in 2008. CISA has issued advisories on Volt Typhoon since 2023. The FBI Director testified that Chinese hackers are positioning on American infrastructure to wreak havoc. And yet no framework existed that translated those warnings into community-level action — with specific checklists, measurable maturity levels, grant funding pathways, and a certification program that builds permanent local capability.

FIR built that framework. The Diamond Blue certification system, the three-volume threat assessment series, the CI Reference Architecture, the Grading Rubric, and the training program exist because the people who should have built them did not — and the communities that need them cannot wait any longer.

What We Believe

The threat is real, confirmed by the U.S. Intelligence Community, and pre-positioned inside American infrastructure today. No federal agency can protect 150,000 water systems and 70,000 electric utilities. The only scalable defense is community-level resilience. Communities that prepare will survive. Communities that do not will fail. The decision to prepare costs nothing — Bronze requires only a governance resolution and a working group. Federal grant programs will pay 90% of the cost for disadvantaged communities. The missing ingredient is not money — it is a framework that tells communities what to build and how to fund it.

Our Approach

FIR does not sell fear. FIR sells readiness. Every claim in every FIR publication is sourced to a specific, citable public document — federal agency advisories, congressional testimony, peer-reviewed research, published cybersecurity analysis. FIR trains practitioners to verify the threat picture independently using open-source intelligence, not to depend on what any media outlet or political administration chooses to emphasize.

FIR’s framework is published, not paywalled. The threat assessment series is available to any community. The Fresh Start assessment is free. BSE 099 is free. Bronze is free. FIR exists to close the gap between what the government knows and what communities are doing about it.