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Three federal agencies announced the joint production and release of a document titled:
Incident Response Guide – Water and Wastewater Sector (January 2024) (“Guide”)
The Guide was produced by the following federal agencies:
- Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Environmental Protection Agency
Contributions are stated to have been made by over 25 water and wastewater sector organizations from private industry, nonprofit, and government.
The Guide is intended to address the concern that cyber threat actors:
. . . are aware of – and deliberately target – single points of failure.
The Guide notes that such a compromise or failure of a water or wastewater sector organization could cause:
. . . cascading impacts throughout the Sector and other critical infrastructure sectors.
The Guide is intended to provide cybersecurity support to the water and wastewater sector to address challenges such as:
- Governance and regulation involving a mix of federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial authorities.
- Cybersecurity security levels across the sector are disparate.
- Often, WWS Sector utilities must prioritize limited resources toward the functionality of their water systems over cybersecurity.
- Universal solutions to cyber challenges in a diverse, target-rich, and resource-poor environment are unfeasible.
The Guide is intended to provide water and wastewater sector owners and operators information to assist with their incident response plans and procedures.
This is stated to be intended to be accomplished by enhancing water and wastewater sector cybersecurity by:
- Establishing clear guidance for reporting cyber incidents
- Connecting utilities with available cybersecurity resources, services, and no-cost trainings
- Empowering utilities to build a strong cybersecurity baseline to improve cyber resilience and cyber hygiene
- Encouraging utilities to integrate into their local cyber communities
A copy of the Guide can be downloaded here.
