WASHINGTON — The Trump administration predicts its water cybersecurity partnership with Texas will yield insights that can protect the entire nation.
“What we are trying to do is find a specific, concrete solution and then scale off of that,” National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said during a talk here at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit on Thursday.
The White House announced in late August that it was working with Texas to explore how private companies could help bolster water utilities’ resilience against hackers. “Project Watershed 250” will start as a 60-day pilot program in the Lone Star State before expanding nationwide, as part of a broader critical infrastructure cybersecurity initiative overseen by the Office of the National Cyber Director.
Cairncross said starting with one state was a more manageable approach to a problem that has bedeviled policymakers for years.
“Over and over again, administrations have come in and said, ‘We’re going to fix this water problem, and here’s the 50-state solution for doing this,’” he said. “And it’s something the federal government says, and people roll their eyes and move on.”
Now, Cairncross said, the White House and Texas Cyber Command are working with “top-of-the-line industry partners” to “help bring costs down” and deploy new defensive technologies.
Funding shortages, decentralization and a dearth of technical expertise have made water one of the most poorly defended infrastructure sectors. Water utilities have repeatedly suffered breaches, including many linked to Iranian government operatives, although so far no hack is known to have caused health or safety issues.
Cybersecurity experts agree that water utilities stand no chance of defending themselves without federal support, but there is no consensus about what that support should look like.
At the Billington conference, Cairncross dismissed the idea that the government should just “write a check” to utilities and leave them to figure out the details. In Texas, he said, “we’ve put people together at a table and are operationalizing this.”
ONCD is also poised to use the Texas water project as a blueprint for broader action.
“We’ve got other sectors that we're going to move this program into,” Cairncross said. “We’ll be announcing them soon. But water is a good start.”
