DEF CON hackers launch Water Watch Center to defend small water utilities
DEF CON Franklin and the National Rural Water Association have launched the Water Watch Center, a program that delivers managed cybersecurity services to small water utilities that have no security staff of their own.
The launch came on Aug. 7 at the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas. More than 30 Minnesota water systems were hit by intrusions in late July, and roughly 12 states have since reported similar activity. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are running incident response. Officials suspect Iranian involvement but have not confirmed it.
The center is aimed at the bottom of the sector. Utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people make up 91% of the roughly 50,000 community water systems in the country. Most have no chief information security officer, no security operations center and no budget to hire either.
Five managed detection and response providers have signed on to serve those systems. Rapid7 Inc., Defendify Inc., Legato Security LLC, L1 Secure and Sentinel Technologies Inc. will exchange threat information and patches through a dedicated collaboration mechanism, then pass what they find to NRWA. The association acts as the national hub.
