You are here:
Full-Scale Cybersecurity Build Out Plans and Cost Estimate
Citation:
Szabo, J., J. Goodrich, AND J. Hall. Full-Scale Cybersecurity Build Out Plans and Cost Estimate. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-23/132, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
The Water Security Test Bed (WSTB) is a full-scale representation of a drinking water distribution pipe that conveys potable water. It is the product of a partnership between Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Currently, the system consists of 450’ of 8-inch diameter water main with pressurized tap water flowing through it. It includes a premise plumbing room (connected to the water main through a 1-inch service connection) that houses water appliances found in a typical home (e.g., water heater, dishwasher, clothes washer). This combination allows testing of contamination scenarios that affect the municipal water utilities and home or business owners and decontamination techniques. The existing system has limited instrumentation and telemetry, and control of the system is performed manually. To date, research at the test bed focused on chemical and biological contamination scenarios (due to natural, accidental, or malicious acts) and benchmarking methods for decontamination/recovery from such scenarios. Going forward, planned full-scale research will focus on infrastructure resiliency and the impacts of cyber intrusions into water utility’s supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA). Using at-scale demonstration will inform how utility owner/operators should prioritize their efforts to harden components or subsystems against cyber-attacks to make them more resilient. This report describes the plan for a full-scale cybersecurity test bed, and the vision for future cybersecurity and water sector resilience research.
Description:
The Water Security Test Bed (WSTB) is a full-scale representation of a drinking water distribution pipe that conveys potable water. It is the product of a partnership between Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Currently, the system consists of 450’ of 8-inch diameter water main with pressurized tap water flowing through it. It includes a premise plumbing room (connected to the water main through a 1-inch service connection) that houses water appliances found in a typical home (e.g., water heater, dishwasher, clothes washer). This combination allows testing of contamination scenarios that affect the municipal water utilities and home or business owners and decontamination techniques. The existing system has limited instrumentation and telemetry, and control of the system is performed manually. To date, research at the test bed focused on chemical and biological contamination scenarios (due to natural, accidental, or malicious acts) and benchmarking methods for decontamination/recovery from such scenarios. Going forward, planned full-scale research will focus on infrastructure resiliency and the impacts of cyber intrusions into water utility’s supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA). Using at-scale demonstration will inform how utility owner/operators should prioritize their efforts to harden components or subsystems against cyber-attacks to make them more resilient. This report describes the plan for a full-scale cybersecurity test bed, and the vision for future cybersecurity and water sector resilience research.