New guidance has been issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and the FBI to help water and wastewater systems — dubbed WWS — sector owners and operators in responding to cyber incidents.
The Incident Response Guide, which was developed with the help of 25 partners from the WWS industry, state and local governments and the nonprofit sector, tackles all the stages of the incident response lifecycle and the federal roles, resources and responsibilities associated with each step, CISA said Thursday.
The guide, whose use does not require technical expertise, also discusses cyber incident response best practices.
CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein notes how the WWS sector “is under constant threat from malicious cyber actors” and says the newly released guide is “timely and actionable” and is reflective of “an outstanding partnership” between various stakeholders to safeguard WWS.
For his part, FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran said his agency “will continue to combat cyber actors” who pose a threat to the WWS sector, which he described as “a vital part of our critical infrastructure.”
On the part of the EPA, Radhika Fox, the assistant administrator for water, said the agency is committed to improving the cyber resilience of the WWS sector, noting that threats to it “represent a real and urgent risk to safe drinking water and wastewater services that our nation relies on.”