Is Our Water Safe to Drink? Securing Our Critical Infrastructure

### Executive Summary This article highlights the cybersecurity risks in operational technology (OT) environments, using examples like Stuxnet and the Colonial Pipeline to illustrate potential real-world impacts, and explains why OT is often underprotected—legacy devices, specialized protocols, and gaps between IT and OT tooling. It recommends a pragmatic approach: establish risk management and documentation, improve visibility and baselining of normal behavior, implement network segmentation and inspection where feasible, maintain patch and vulnerability management, and ensure secure, monitored remote access while recognizing operational constraints and integration challenges.