EPA issues water cybersecurity mandates, concerning industry and experts

The Environmental Protection Agency’s water cybersecurity standards follow the Biden administration’s new national cyber strategy.

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Giving water sanitation inspectors cybersecurity oversight is a mistake, say industry groups, experts

The water sector is seen as among the nation’s most vulnerable critical infrastructure to cyberattack after attacks in Florida and California.

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Cyberspace Solarium congressman, water officials decry EPA inaction on cybersecurity

There are about 52,000 drinking water systems in the U.S. and that fragmentation makes the sector harder to defend, experts say.

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Voluntary Biden administration control system security initiative coming to water sector

The Biden administration announced Thursday it is extending a voluntary cybersecurity initiative for essential control systems in the electricity sector and pipelines to facilities that supply water across the U.S. Under the initiative, the administration is pushing participating water sector facilities to adopt detection technologies that would monitor cyber threats to industrial control systems (ICS), which automate processes such as the treatment, storage and distribution of water. It’s also urging them to more rapidly share threat data with the U.S. government. The 100-day plan will first aim to bring in larger facilities. The water sector, which includes what a senior administration official estimated at over 150,000 facilities that provide water to approximately 300 million Americans, has long been considered one of the most vulnerable in the U.S. to cyberattacks. A hack last February on a facility in Florida temporarily altered the plant’s sodium hydroxide setting to a level harmful to […]

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Biden signs infrastructure bill that provides nearly $2 billion for cybersecurity

Presdent Joe Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law on Monday that includes nearly $2 billion for cybersecurity and related provisions. The biggest piece of digital security funding is a Federal Emergency Management Agency cyber grant program, administered in consultation with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that would distribute $1 billion over four years to state and local governments. An additional $21 million would go toward the Office of the National Cyber Director, which has been unable to make key hires since being established earlier this year due to funding shortages. In all, the legislation — known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — is “the largest investment in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history,” the White House boasted, one that “makes our communities safer and our infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change and cyber-attacks.” […]

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National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, new cyber kid on the federal block, begins to stake a claim

National Cyber Director Chris Inglis is fleshing out what, exactly, his new office plans to do with itself. With a “strategic intent statement,” a personnel move, a pair of interviews and a newspaper op-ed, Inglis and his office on Thursday provided their most concrete objectives to date for a White House post that sprung into existence in January, and that Inglis won confirmation for in June. He joined a crowded field of feds focused on cyber, from other offices within the White House to departments and agencies like the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the National Security Agency. Inglis said Thursday that it’s a natural, when looking at the disparate organizations in the federal government with cybersecurity responsibilities, to wonder who’s in charge. But he said there were “more appropriate” questions. “How do we bring coherence, how do drive public-private collaboration, how do we have […]

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