The phrase "a problem of protecting" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing issues related to safeguarding or ensuring the safety of something or someone.
Example: "The committee is addressing a problem of protecting endangered species in our region."
Alternatives: "an issue of safeguarding" or "a challenge of ensuring protection".
In 1948, a federal housing bureaucrat named Paul Oppermann, trying to come to terms with the perils of the nuclear age, proposed a solution to the problem of protecting America's cities from the bomb: empty them out preëmptively by encouraging the population to move to suburbs and small towns of fifty thousand or fewer.
The report compared the problem of protecting children from online risks to dealing with a more mundane hazard of daily life.
"We've been looking at the problem of protecting people on the battlefield," said Norman Whitaker, the Darpa project manager for the event.
The problem of protecting shipping from icebergs is most critical in two regions, the high-latitude Southern Ocean and the northwestern section of the North Atlantic.
If that were true, then the problem of protecting patrimony could simply be solved by telling governments to pass good laws and enforce them.
"You're solving the problem of protecting farmland, but you're not controlling population and the taxes and the traffic associated with development," said Richard Amper, executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, an environmental group.
But that requires enough people to know and understand what they're asking for, and then you're back to the problem of protecting people from their own ignorance when it comes to privacy and security.
Pumping is now done by diesel engines, but the perennial problem of protecting the low drained lands from the high-riding river remains and was dramatically illustrated in the severe floods of March 1947, when several riverbanks were breached.
