Securing Water and Wastewater Operational Technology Environments

Recent cyberattacks against U.S. water and wastewater utilities targeted internet-facing operational technology (OT) devices—notably PLCs—allowing unauthorized actors to change passwords and IP settings and disrupt monitoring and control. The NIST NCCoE publication NIST SP 1800-45 demonstrates secure remote access reference architectures (on-premise, cloud-based, and system-to-system) and recommends layered controls (segmentation, MFA, jump servers, logging) alongside enterprise asset visibility and the NIST CSF to improve resilience across the WWS sector.