Water Industry Cyber Security Human Resources and Training Needs

Richard Skiba (1)

1 LRES Training Management

Cyber-attacks are a growing and persistent threat to water infrastructure, including drinking water and wastewater systems. Water infrastructure uses a number of technical control systems to manage and track infrastructure properties, including hardware and software, such as monitoring and data acquisition systems, process control systems, and other devices, such as programmable logic controllers, that control data gathering equipment and information technology. As these systems become more connected to corporate systems and the internet, security approaches are needed equally across both the control system and the corporate network infrastructure, as there are many potential entry points for cyber attackers to exploit to these systems. These cyber-attacks occur on water infrastructure worldwide and water providers, in order to reduce the risks, need to identify control system asset security vulnerabilities and design, build and maintain a security architecture proportionate to the risk. Human resources are fundamental to these cybersecurity systems and the required emerging job roles require industry specific definition. This paper provides definition on the roles and responsibilities for control system security governance, particularly from the perspective of skills and knowledge and training requirements with a view to addressing leading industry security standards for control systems and practices.

Mots clés: Cyber Security; Cyber Attacks; Risk Mitigation; Critical Infrastructure; Water Industry; Scada; Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition

Domaines: Education

Richard Skiba. Water Industry Cyber Security Human Resources and Training Needs. International Journal of Engineering Management, 2020, 4 (1), pp.11-16. ⟨10.11648/j.ijem.20200401.12⟩. ⟨halshs-02906068⟩