But sometimes even these analysts have to pick up a newspaper, watch TV or surf the Web to learn about the latest threats.

EWA’s Information and Infrastructure Technologies (IIT) of Herndon, Va, works in a unique niche as the contractor charged with operating two Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs). The centers serve as information conduits between the government and industries critical to the nation’s day-to-day operations.

IIT analysts distribute security alerts to water utilities, railroads, and – in the near future – mass transit systems using information gleaned from public sources as well as the CIA, FBI, and other Intelligence groups.

In all, 12 industry sectors – including electric power, telecommunications, information technology (IT), financial services, oil and gas, food, and chemicals – rely on ISACs for specific security information.

For example, Atlanta based Internet Security Systems (ISS) runs the ISAC for IT companies while Global Integrity, a division of Predictive Systems Inc. of New York, operates the financial services ISAC. A complete list of the ISACs is available at http://www.nipc.gov/infosharing/infosharing6.htm.

The nation’s interdependence is so great that if the freight rail system went down for seven days, Los Angeles would be unable to get enough chlorine to ensure its drinking was safe, according to IIT Technical Director Steven Clemmons. Yet IIT’s analysts don’t always receive government intelligence that could be vital to customers. Meanwhile ISACs that pass threat information to other critical industries have few if any ties to the intelligence community.

When U.S. Intelligence agencies became concerned recently that al Qaeda could be preparing a biological, radiological, or chemical attack, IIT was not informed, according to analyst Keith Kennedy.

Instead, Kennedy used his most often-used source of information: the Internet. He said the company relied on Web news accounts to prepare an advisory to the railroads and utilities that are members of the Surface Transportation and Water Supply ISACs.

“There is no indication of any immediate threat, “ said an IIT advisory prepared the day before the Bush administration raised the national threat level from “elevated” (yellow) to “high” (orange).

IIT analysts did advise that “security personnel should be aware of recent trends in terrorist activity and the heightened risk of terrorist attack associated with U.S. efforts to force the disarmament of Iraq.”

Even without any institutional connection with the intelligence community, ISACs play a vital role, according to Phil Lacombe, president of Veridian Inc.s’ Security Solutions Sector.

Lacombe said certain key industries were “critical to the health of the country” and required the kind of free flow of information ISACs make possible to be able to protect themselves from attack.

Lacombe was executive director of the 1997 Presidential Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, which emphasized the need to find a way for government and industry to work together to protect the industries on which the economy, and government, depends.

The next year, President Clinton signed the Presidential Decision Directive 63, establishing a National Infrastructure Protection Agency (NIPC) to coordinate the flow of information between industry and government through the ISACs, which the directive also initiated.

But not until after the 9/11 attacks did the ISACs become “a front burner issue”, according to Clemmons.

The ISACs aren’t just for homeland security. The analysis centers recently warned their members about the SQL computer worm, which corrupted computer systems nationwide.

In that attack, some sectors fared better than others.

One that may have been caught off guard was finance.

Edward Schwartz, executive vice president and general manager for Predictive Systems’ Global Integrity Services business unit in Herndon, Va., said “there definitely were degradations of network performance” that knocked some Bank of American ATMs out of service.

He indicated that these systems did not fail from lack of warning. Rather, he said, some network administrators in the industry were “asleep at the wheel.”

Another link in the ISAC structure is the government-designated organization that serves as a “sector coordinator,” such as the North American Electric Reliability Council for the electric power ISAC.

In the case of the Surface Transportation ISAC, the sector coordinator is the American Association of Railroads in Washington, D.C., which has its own operations center. There, two IIT analysts work with the association’s director of security, according to Clemmons.

“What the ISAC is really about is the information it provides,” Clemmons said.

But information does not only travel from the contractor to the sector members. Part of the reason the ISACs were established was to ease barriers that sometimes keep companies from sharing information.

By sending information about security incidents to the contractor, an IT company or a bank can feel comfortable that potentially sensitive information will not be given to competitors. Instead, the contractor collects the information and analyzes it for trends that could be important to other member companies. Security breaches that may seem like isolated incidents could indicate a pattern when seen together.

Companies are also more willing to share potentially sensitive information with a private company than they are the government, which might have to make the information publicly available under the Freedom of Information Act.