Wednesday, 15 December 2021

Under attack: Having a cyber Security plan is critical for your Water and Wastewater Plant

 It is challenging to reconcile with attacks on critical infrastructure that impose temporary closure of 45 percent of diesel supply, gasoline, and pinch on the east coast, even if hackers receive $ 4.4 million.

An operator pays attention to what happens and corrects the problem. The possibility of system sensors and redundancies will prevent disaster without human intervention, but the event is a nightmare item.

Meeting alerts 

In April, the National Security Council announced the beginning of the 100-day plan to improve the security of American electricity infrastructure. Following the colonial pipe incident, the President commented that his public-private initiative would include a water system.

About 200 utility companies provide electricity to the majority of Americans. Altogether, there are around 3,000 electrical utilities in this country. When it comes to the country's water sector, the image is far more complicated.

More than 52,000 community drinking water systems in the US provide tap water to nearly 300 million Americans. Ninety-three percent provides water to less than 10,000 people, and 67 percent becomes less than 500. 

The invisibility of the management

The manager of the utility of all sizes sees a series of continuous attacks from various levels of sophistication, said Kevin M. Morley, Ph.D., Federal Relations Manager for the American Water Works Association (AWAWA). 

In addition to the information technology system needed for government business functions, water utilities use an industrial control system (ICS) to manage pumps, motors, and other equipment that make their plants run. If the network is not configured correctly, and ICS is not segmented, separated from ITS, the attack can affect both systems.

Small blunder, influential outgrowths

Perhaps the most famous happened in Australia in 2000, when an angry former employee released almost a million liters of raw waste into the river, park, and housing land. Any procedure does not protect ICS, defense, or policy, including that access to workers has not been revoked.

The 2007 attack on the Canal Authority of Tehama-Colusa in California was also a work of former employees, as was the case of 2012 in the Largo, Florida waste processing area. In 2014, an employee was fired by a company that produced smart water meters using access to disturbing the five meters of water utilities in three countries. A former employee of the Post-Rock country district in Ellsworth, Kan., Has been indicted for entering its system in 2019 and disrupting the cleaning and disinfection system.

Shared practice, mutual vulnerability

Security fights in rural communities, where 25 percent of the population is served by 85 percent of the water system of the state community, is another matter.

Revenue from a small population of tariff payers served by rural systems may not be enough to close even the cost of water supply, he said, let alone allow them to invest in solid Cyber Security security. In addition, new risks have entered the image for those who have recently increased remote operations.

SKILLOGIC provides Cyber Security and Ethical Hacking Courses. You can opt for Online training or Classroom training. The ethical hacking classroom courses are available at Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad and Kochi.

Hope is not a policy.

More funds may be on the road. "Congress will make some decisions in the next few months about the Cyber Security of the Water Sector, and need to be understood about funds for equipment and tools," said Michael Arceneaux, Managing Director of Waterisac.

Membership in community sharing information such as AWWA or Waterisac can be another form of support. Following the threat and determining the most likely to affect the water sector can be a full-time job, Walker said, even for a sound system.


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