California Water Views

The Biden-Harris administration is redoubling its efforts to improve cybersecurity for the nation’s water systems. In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House issued a dire warning to state governors alerting them of the need to protect water and wastewater systems from ongoing cybersecurity threats and requested that the states provide plans to decrease the risk of attacks on water and wastewater systems in their state. … 

Despite efforts to stem increasing cyber threats to water systems around the nation, on October 13, 2023, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew cybersecurity mandates put in place by the Biden administration after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals July decision to place the mandates on hold while court actions continued.

In an attempt to harden clean water and wastewater treatment facilities from cyberattacks, the administration issued an interpretive memorandum in March 2023, that mandated adding cybersecurity assessments as a regular part of ...

According to a January 27, 2022 statement from the White House:

"Today, the Biden-Harris Administration announced it will extend the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Cybersecurity Initiative to the water sector. The Water Sector Action plan outlines surge actions that will take place over the next 100 days to improve the cybersecurity of the sector."

The nation’s critical infrastructure is facing both physical and cyber threats from domestic and foreign actors. An alarming combination of domestic extremists, white supremacists and aggressive misinformation and ...

Cyberattacks on organizations worldwide surged 40% in 2021. September 2021 broke records for the number of weekly cyberattacks, topping all other months since January 2020. Currently, one out of every 61 organizations worldwide is impacted by ransomware attacks every week. Given this ever-increasing threat level, a national law requiring critical infrastructure organizations to report cybersecurity incidents to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is on the horizon. In addition, the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure bill ...