Cyber Defense eMagazine December 2019

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pollute the water supply could make great cities almost uninhabitable for weeks on end. Farming regions
are also heavily dependent on water supplies for irrigation and cyber-attacks aimed at agricultural regions
could even impact the country’s food supply.
An orchestrated attack on the US water supply sponsored by a hostile nation state would wreak untold
chaos on a target country’s economy and way of life, the primary aim of cyberwarfare. Alternatively,
financially hacker groups could hold authorities and even countries to ransom by executing targeted
malware attacks on water utilities.
Water utilities typically have outdated cybersecurity in place that has not kept pace with the age of the
internet. Where critical infrastructures once used stand-alone IT systems and operations were largely
mechanical, water utilities are becoming increasingly digitalized while also embracing the Internet of
Industrial Things (IoIT). In the interest of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, third-party contractors are now
also frequently used for mission-critical functions. All these innovations carry an unseen price. They leave
the utility open numerous threat vectors.
It is now a matter of national urgency that water utilities extend their cybersecurity perimeters immediately
with modern Twenty-First Century defenses designed to stay a step ahead of state sponsored hackers
and criminal gangs. SCADAfence technology and procedures, for example, allow water utilities to identify
and examine exposures and security gaps before attacks can occur. Network maps, statistics and
dashboards are designed to fit from the smallest network to those with thousands of assets. SCADAfence
is now partnering with Fortinet’s FortiGate VPN functionality to allow secure remote connectivity to
industrial facilities and crucial infrastructure such as water utilities. Part of the process must also include
including monitoring of internal traffic on the system and being able to instantly disconnect or disable a
remote session if the user is performing actions that deviate from company policies, learned behavior, or
rule-based engines from inside the SCADAfence platform.
On October 23, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, urged the American
people to “try and imagine a day without water.” Unless America starts to secure its water utilities against
cyber-attacks, their imaginings could become a grim reality for many - and far sooner than Phelps,
Colgate or the climate activists anticipate.
About the Author
Michael Yehoshua is the global VP of marketing at operation technology (OT)
cybersecurity company SCADAfence. SCADAfence is the only Cybersecurity
platform built to keep complex, large-scale OT networks running smoothly as you
embrace digital transformation. Visit him online and learn more about his company
at https://www.scadafence.com.