A NCUA letter to credit unions outlines guidance for identifying essential critical infrastructure workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter references recent guidance by the Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Agency, which was issued to assist organizations and businesses in identifying essential workers “to ensure the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure.”

For the financial services and information technology sectors, CISA identified the following essential critical infrastructure workers.

Financial services employees, including:

• workers who are needed to process and maintain systems for processing financial transactions and services (e.g., payment, clearing, and settlement; wholesale funding; insurance services; and capital markets activities);
• workers who are needed to provide consumer access to banking and lending services, including ATMs, and to move currency and payments (e.g., armored cash carriers); and
• workers who support financial operations, such as those staffing data and security operations centers.

Information technology employees, including:

• workers who support command centers;;
• data center operators, including system administrators, HVAC and electrical engineers, security personnel, IT managers, data transfer solutions engineers, software and hardware engineers and database administrators;
• client service centers, field engineers and other technicians supporting critical infrastructure, as well as manufacturers and supply chain vendors that provide hardware and software and information technology equipment for critical infrastructure;
• workers responding to cyber incidents involving critical infrastructure, including medical facilities, state, local, tribal and territorial governments and federal facilities, energy and utilities, and banks and financial institutions and other critical infrastructure categories and personnel;
• workers supporting the provision of essential global, national and local infrastructure for computing services (incl. cloud computing services), business infrastructure, web-based services and critical manufacturing;
• workers supporting communications systems and information technology used by law enforcement, public safety, medical, energy and other critical industries; and
• Support required for continuity of services, including janitorial/cleaning personnel.

The letter can be accessed on NCUA’s website.