Cyber volunteer effort for small water utilities announces new MSSP effort

DEF CON Franklin, working with the National Rural Water Association, is launching a scalable MSSP model to deliver continuous cybersecurity services to small and rural U.S. water utilities—starting with threat detection and monitoring and expanding to incident response and compliance—via regional providers feeding a national “Water Watch Center.” Led by Jake Braun with Tara Wheeler joining full-time and partial funding from Craig Newmark, the initiative aims to replace an unscalable volunteer model and address widespread EPA-identified cybersecurity deficiencies amid persistent targeting of water systems by foreign threat actors.