The Howard Bend Water Plant facility conducted a tabletop exercise, focused on incident information sharing procedures, and emergency response and recovery operations.

A new collaborative effort will focus on developing high-impact cybersecurity resilience strategies within 100 days to safeguard the water and wastewater sector.

Water and wastewater (WWS) facilities are under attack, along with the recent increase in critical infrastructure cyberattacks. A joint statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) details recent attacks and what WWS systems can do to bolster their cyber defense.

Cybercriminals have targeted the Bay Area water supply. Similar to the Oldsmar water treatment attack in Florida, the threat actor used legitimate credentials to break into remote access tool TeamViewer. After logging in, they deleted programs that the plant used to treat drinking water.

Attacks on water systems can come in various forms, not only from pure physical threats. Having a strong and diligent workforce that emphasizes security and basic methods of cyber protection is imperative.

Bipartisan House lawmakers introduced a bill this week intended to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks following the latest unsuccessful attack on a Florida water treatment facility.  

Agencies and authorities that provide water, wastewater and dam services don’t face the same regulatory hurdles as power utilities, but they’re also often smaller and have fewer resources, housed as they generally are within municipal governments or other smaller entities.