Water & Waste Water Industry
“A clean water supply and efficient wastewater management underpin modern economies—an outcome-focused OT strategy is essential.”
Situational Awareness
Perception (What’s happening?)
- Nation-state actors, financially motivated cybercriminals and hacktivists target the sector.
- Legacy systems, rising IT/OT convergence and low workforce OT awareness compound risk.
- Connectivity, geographic spread and organisational complexity expand the attack surface.
- Heightened regulation (e.g. EU NIS2, NDAA 2021) forces cyber strategy reassessment.
Comprehension (Why does it matter?)
- OT manipulation can cause spills, contamination or even loss of life.
- Failure to meet legal, regulatory and compliance obligations can incur fines or legal action.
Risk Management
For organisations with no or limited OT cybersecurity, we recommend a two-stage holistic approach:
Stage 1 – Identify & Prioritise
Map your mission-critical OT functions (water treatment, pumping stations), assess outage impacts,
and engage system custodians to enumerate adversary tactics—covering network diagrams,
logical access, supply chain and physical security.
Stage 2 – OT Cybersecurity Framework (OT-CSF)
Formalise policies, procedures and playbooks aligned to:
- ISA/IEC 62443
- NIST CSF
- NERC-CIP
- ISO/IEC 27001/27002/27019
Minimum scope:
- Governance model (RACI)
- End-to-end operating model
- Regulatory compliance mapping
- Asset inventory
- Network architecture documentation
- Incident response plan
- Workforce development
- Procedural controls (access, change management, backup)
- Monitoring & reporting
Mature with self-assessments, external audits, vendor assurance, threat detection, vulnerability monitoring and privileged access management.
Ensure budgets, internal skills, vendor support and governance mechanisms to sustain your program.