Water utilities are on heightened alert for cyber attacks, so Water Finance & Management chatted with Marty Edwards, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Operational Technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) for Tenable. Edwards recently gave recent testimony in Congress, appearing as a witness before in February before the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection. The hearing discussed the increased cyber threats targeting the water sector and the strategy Congress should support to protect water and wastewater systems.
WF&M: Are water/wastewater systems especially vulnerable to cyber attacks compared to other infrastructure systems?
Marty Edwards: As highlighted by recent warnings from the EPA and the White House, cyberattacks targeting water systems are increasingly prevalent because downtime in these systems can be costly. Attackers recognize the consequences to water and wastewater systems if operations go down and prey on this vulnerability and desire to restore operations quickly.
Attacks in the water sector are largely due to poor cyber hygiene. Bad actors can…
