Sara Jerome reports that Federal officials are urging water utilities to pay more attention to the rising threat of cyberattacks. This will become a greater issue in the future, as more water systems try to cut costs by moving toward full automation, BNA Bloomberg reported, citing federal aides.
The U.S. EPA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are trying to assist small water systems in this area. They are creating new training materials that could be especially useful for small, rural systems without adequate resources, according to the report.
Cyberthreats to water utilities can come in a number of different forms ... there is ransomware, in which hackers demand compensation to relinquish control of equipment they have hijacked, or insider threats, which involve a system being compromised by someone who was granted access by the utility. Jackson cited a 2015 IBM survey that found insider threats constitute more than half of all corporate cybersecurity incidents.
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