The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) officially launched the CI Fortify initiative on May 5, 2026, issuing a comprehensive set of technical guidelines designed to harden the nation's critical infrastructure against sophisticated cyberattacks. This international effort, coordinated with partners from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and several European nations, focuses on the concept of operational resilience under duress. The guidance specifically instructs operators in the 16 critical infrastructure sectors to develop and test protocols for maintaining essential services while operating in a degraded state during an active compromise.
According to the CISA technical advisory, the initiative is a direct response to evolving tactics used by state-sponsored threat actors, particularly those associated with the People's Republic of China. The advisory highlights the persistent risk posed by living off the land (LOTL) techniques, where attackers use legitimate administrative tools already present in a system to evade detection. CISA Director Jen Easterly stated that the goal of CI Fortify is to shift the defensive posture from mere prevention to guaranteed continuity of service. The agency reported that recent telemetry indicates a 30 percent increase in pre-positioning activities within the energy, water, and transportation sectors over the last twelve months.
The CI Fortify framework introduces several technical requirements for infrastructure providers. These include the implementation of granular network segmentation to isolate operational technology (OT) from information technology (IT) environments and the adoption of phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) across all administrative access points. Furthermore, the guidance mandates that firms conduct adversarial resilience testing at least twice annually. These tests must simulate a total loss of primary communication channels and require the manual override of automated systems to ensure that physical processes—such as power distribution or water filtration—can continue without digital oversight.
The initiative also establishes a new reporting standard for anomalous persistence. Under these rules, critical infrastructure entities must notify CISA within 12 hours of discovering any unauthorized presence in their environment that suggests long-term reconnaissance or sabotage preparation, even if no data exfiltration has occurred. This shortens the previous 24-hour reporting window for significant incidents. CISA officials noted that the CI Fortify initiative will be supported by the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), which will provide real-time threat intelligence sharing to help firms identify the specific indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with state-sponsored sabotage campaigns.
The release of the CI Fortify guidance follows a series of tabletop exercises conducted in early 2026 that revealed vulnerabilities in the ability of private sector firms to maintain manual operations during a simulated large-scale outage. By standardizing these resilience protocols, CISA aims to mitigate the impact of potential zero-day exploits that target industrial control systems. The agency confirmed that it will begin auditing compliance with these new fortification standards for federal contractors starting in the third quarter of 2026.