The Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) Water: Operational Technology and Data conference taking place in April this year will have cyber security in the water sector as a key focus.

According to the IET, the need to protect against cyber-attacks in the water sector is vital.

Pearse Bradley, Head of Telemetry & Telecoms at Northern Ireland Water commented:

“The trend to new communication technologies has led the industry towards greater reliance on 3rd party solutions as opposed to in-house solutions. Use of the internet does make water utilities more vulnerable to cyber security breaches.”

Recent statistic from Beaming reveal that British firms were each subjected to an average of close to 230,000 cyber-attacks in 2016; the average volume of attacks hitting individual company firewalls reached an alarming 1,000 per day.

With the digitisation of how utilities are managed becoming more popular and commonplace, threats are rising as fast as conveniences, and preventing cyber breaches is an area that now needs to be at the forefront of its engineering strategy.

According to Simon Hall, Water Sector lead at the newly opened National Cyber Security Centre, while this threat is common to many industries, it is the geographical distribution of water supply and remote locations that pose specific challenges:

“Old operational technology solutions have been local in nature, and not interconnected. The newer systems that are now being deployed are much more interconnected to provide greater efficiency, flexibility and ease of use. The providers need to ensure that security is built in to these new (largely IP based) systems from the start.”

“Also, companies can buy good equipment and services, but you can’t necessarily buy good security. A great deal can, and has to be achieved by improving security culture, and security policies and processes. That means awareness and education programmes, and sound, enforceable policies around areas such as third party access, change management, privileges and protective monitoring. The good news is that much of this – the development of good policy, or user awareness for example – is not expensive.”

It is not all bad though, according to Charles Williams, Strategic Business Director, Sweco, who says that while the interconnectivity of water suppliers leaves it open to attack, it could also provide the solution.

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