Water and Utilities – Cybersecurity Services
The Water and Utilities sector is responsible for the treatment, distribution, wastewater management, and stormwater control that support public health, environmental protection, and industrial operations. At the heart of this sector are Operational Technology (OT) systems that control and automate physical processes across water treatment plants, pumping stations, distribution networks, reservoirs, desalination plants, and wastewater treatment facilities.
These environments rely heavily on Industrial Control Systems (ICS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Remote Terminal Units (RTUs), variable frequency drives (VFDs), intelligent motor control centers (MCCs), and field instrumentation such as flow, pressure, level, turbidity, pH, and chlorine analyzers.
OT systems manage critical operations including raw water intake, chemical dosing, filtration, sedimentation, membrane processes, disinfection, booster pumping, pressure zone management, leak detection, and sludge handling. These processes are highly sensitive and must operate within strict parameters to ensure safe drinking water and environmentally compliant wastewater discharge.
With the adoption of smart water technologies, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), IIoT sensors, cloud-based SCADA historians, and remote telemetry, water utilities are becoming more connected and data-driven, significantly increasing their OT cyber exposure.
Major Challenges
The Water and Utilities sector faces distinctive OT cybersecurity challenges due to its public safety role, aging infrastructure, and resource constraints.
A major challenge is the age and fragility of infrastructure. Many water treatment plants and pumping stations operate equipment that is decades old, running legacy firmware and proprietary protocols with little or no built-in security.
Another significant challenge is the extensive geographic dispersion of assets. Pumping stations, reservoirs, and lift stations are often spread across large rural and urban areas and connected through radio, cellular, microwave, or leased-line communications, which are difficult to consistently secure and monitor.
Limited cybersecurity budgets and staffing are common in municipal and regional utilities, resulting in gaps in asset visibility, patch management, and real-time monitoring. Many facilities also rely heavily on outsourced system integrators and vendors, increasing supply-chain risk.
The risk of process manipulation attacks is particularly severe. Unauthorized changes to chlorine dosing, pressure settings, or flow control logic can lead to public health incidents, service outages, equipment damage, and regulatory violations.
Ransomware poses a major risk, as disruptions in water and wastewater services can rapidly escalate into public safety emergencies, increasing pressure to restore operations quickly.
Additionally, compliance pressures from environmental and public health regulators often focus on operational outcomes rather than cybersecurity maturity, creating a gap between safety regulation and cyber risk management.
Best Practices
Strong OT cybersecurity in the water and utilities sector requires practical, operations-centric security controls that respect reliability and safety requirements.
Network segmentation should be implemented to separate corporate IT networks from OT control networks, using industrial DMZs, firewalls, and strict conduit rules in accordance with ISA/IEC 62443 frameworks. Critical treatment processes should be isolated from external connectivity wherever possible.
Utilities should maintain accurate, continuously updated asset inventories using passive discovery techniques that identify PLCs, RTUs, HMIs, communication modules, and firmware versions without interrupting operations.
Access control policies must enforce least privilege, role-based access, and strong authentication. Remote access should be routed through secure jump hosts with multi-factor authentication and full session logging.
Organizations should implement robust configuration and change management practices to monitor PLC logic, HMI configurations, and setpoint changes, with automated alerting for unauthorized modifications.
A risk-based patching strategy should be adopted, balancing operational risks with cybersecurity threats. Where patches are not feasible, compensating controls such as network allow-listing and strict protocol filtering should be used.
Utilities should also develop and test cyber-physical incident response plans that integrate IT, OT, operations, and public communications teams, ensuring rapid, coordinated responses to cyber events affecting water quality or availability.
Cybersecurity Solutions
Specialized OT cybersecurity solutions are critical for protecting water and utilities environments.
Industrial Network Monitoring and Anomaly Detection Platforms provide passive visibility into OT protocols such as Modbus, DNP3, IEC 60870-5-104, Profinet, and custom telemetry protocols, allowing operators to detect rogue devices, abnormal commands, and unusual communication patterns.
Ruggedized Industrial Firewalls provide protocol-aware filtering at plant perimeters, remote pumping stations, and treatment facilities, ensuring only authorized traffic flows between zones.
Secure Remote Access Solutions with jump servers, multi-factor authentication, and session recording help control vendor and contractor access to sensitive control systems.
Endpoint Protection for OT Systems offers application allow-listing, USB control, and memory protection for HMIs, engineering workstations, and operator terminals.
Backup and Recovery Solutions designed for OT environments ensure rapid recovery of PLC logic, SCADA configurations, historical data, and chemical dosing parameters after ransomware or destructive attacks.
SIEM and centralized logging platforms can integrate OT telemetry with enterprise security operations centers, providing unified visibility across IT and OT environments.
Physical process-aware monitoring tools can correlate cyber events with real-world process data such as chlorine levels, turbidity, and pressure anomalies, identifying cyber-physical attacks earlier.
Summary
OT cybersecurity in the Water and Utilities sector is directly tied to public health, environmental protection, and community resilience. As water systems become more digitally connected, the risk of cyber incidents with real-world physical consequences continues to rise. By investing in layered security architectures, strong access control, continuous monitoring, and OT-specific cybersecurity technologies, utilities can significantly reduce the likelihood and impact of cyber-physical attacks. Ultimately, a mature OT cybersecurity strategy in this sector requires a close partnership between operations, engineering, cybersecurity, and regulatory stakeholders, ensuring that critical water services remain safe, reliable, and secure in an increasingly complex threat landscape.