Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve is issuing this letter to inform supervised financial institutions and their service providers that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the Department of Homeland Security has identified essential critical infrastructure workers in the financial services sector.¹ The March 19, 2020, CISA Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce:  Ensuring Community and National Resilience in COVID-19 Response is attached to this SR letter.

CISA, in collaboration with other federal agencies and the private sector, developed an initial list of essential critical infrastructure workers to help state and local officials in their work to protect their communities, while ensuring continuity of functions critical to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security. As state and local communities establish COVID-19-related restrictions, CISA is providing this guidance to state and local governments affirming that parts of the financial services sector workforce are considered essential critical infrastructure workers.  Further, the CISA guidance may assist state and local governments in prioritizing activities related to continuity of operations and incident response, including the appropriate movement of financial services sector and other critical infrastructure workers within and between jurisdictions.

CISA has identified the following parts of the financial services sector workforce as essential:

• Workers who are needed to process and maintain systems for processing financial transactions and services (for example, 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 automated teller machines, and to move currency and payments (for example, armored cash carriers).
• Workers who support financial operations, such as those staffing data and security operations centers.

Refer to the CISA version 2 guidance for a complete list of the categories of essential financial services sector workers, which is attached to this SR letter.

A supervised financial institution should provide its essential employees and contractors with a letter from the institution's leadership explaining that the identified worker carrying the letter is an essential critical infrastructure worker who needs to be allowed access to their place of work.  The institution should also consider attaching the CISA guidance to its letter, which may assist an employee or contractor to travel inside restricted areas in order to support critical infrastructure. 

Reserve Banks are asked to distribute this letter to the Federal Reserve-supervised institutions in their districts, as well as to their supervisory and examination staff. Questions may be sent via the Board's public website.²

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