The Unseen Guardian: BlastShield’s Impact on Public Water System Security

A large city has a decades-old water facility that supplies millions of citizens with clean water. Their operational technology (OT) network consists of a mix of legacy and new systems that all share one major problem - they are all vulnerable to AI-powered cyber-attacks and malware. Since they operate a flat OT network, an attacker could take down their entire system or hold it for ransom, if even a single malware, phishing, or credentials attack succeeds on any of their devices. 

Concerned by warnings from the government that water infrastructure has become a prime target of bad actors, and in light of many recent attacks on other water facilities, the SCADA Superintendent seeks an alternative to their existing firewall and VPN-based security solution. 

With a steady increase in zero-day vulnerabilities in these older systems, the situation has just become too complicated to manage with only a limited amount of resources and personnel. The Superintendent learns about BlastWave from another water facility. They love it over there for easy Network Cloaking, Secure Remote Access, and non-disruptive Microsegmentation.

Our SCADA Superintendent deploys BlastShield to cloak the network and reduce administrative overhead.  The OT network is now undiscoverable by scans and immune from phishing attacks, securely protecting the city’s water supply from hackers, cybercriminals, and bad actors.

In a recent study, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency found over 153,000 public drinking water systems, and more than 16,000 publicly-owned wastewater systems.  These systems serve nearly 80% of the US population. Significant risks highlighted in this report are network segmentation to prevent lateral movement, secure remote access, and ensuring that no part of the OT systems connect directly to the Internet. And the increasing attacks on the water infrastructure have only heightened awareness of these vulnerabilities. The industry needs a better solution.

BlastShield mitigates two of the water industry's most significant risks: network segmentation to prevent lateral movement, secure remote access, and direct internet connectivity for water-based industrial control systems. BlastShield also addresses the secure remote access problem by enforcing AI-resistant biometric authentication, eliminating the risk of stolen credentials through phishing attacks. 

BlastShield's Gateways protect critical yet outdated legacy infrastructure. Older PLCs, sensors, and pumps all become invisible to external threats. Rather than just obfuscating these systems, they disappear entirely from the attacker’s scans and probes. And even if a cyber asset does become compromised, BlastShield’s secure network segmentation prevents unauthorized lateral movement, protecting the other nearby OT devices. With BlastShield, water systems operators ensure security and compliance with industry standards and guidance like NIST 800-53, 800-207 for Zero Trust, and IEC 62443.