Various precautions exist to protect the water system

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. JEA wants to reassure its customers that the water treated at the facilities is safe to drink due to the low protocols that are in place.

At the JEA Center for Water Treatment, Kevin Holbrooks is the director of environmental compliance, and it’s his job to make sure the city’s water is safe. He said the attempt to poison drinking water at a treatment facility in the town of Oldsmar in Pinellas County was worrying.

“We know people are constantly trying to do that. This is a known fact. The fact that a hacker hacked through their security is important.

According to authorities, a hacker gained access to Oldsmar’s water treatment plant in an unsuccessful attempt to contaminate the water supply with a corrosive chemical. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Monday that someone could break into a computer system for Oldsmar’s water treatment plant on Friday. Gualtieri said the hacker briefly increased the amount of lye by more than 100. The sheriff said that a supervisor saw that the chemical was being tampered with and that he could intervene and reverse it.

Holbrooks said JEA has several safeguards.

“Our systems are monitored 24/7. The feeding speed is controlled remotely and can be controlled from the planting site. We work on site and look after everything daily. We have people in the field who monitor field conditions and distance sensors throughout our distribution system, ‘said Holbrooks.

JEA also has laboratory technicians and scientists who are constantly testing and analyzing water samples to make sure the water is safe to drink. In fact, the water is tested on average more than 45,000 times a year.

As for the computer system used to pump water and add chemicals to the water to make it drinkable, JEA could not provide specific details without compromising security.

To address the risks that could affect the security and reliability of services, JEA’s security program has a low defense strategy. The JEA Security Program includes, but is not limited to, the management of vulnerabilities, system monitoring, and active response to such threats. These guarantees ensure that JEA actively maintains a very secure control system.

“JEA also has guarantees to protect its water system. Water treatment facilities are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and water testing is mandatory and regulated by the state. On average, JEA collects and tests more than 45,000 water samples each year. ”

U.S. Senator Marco of Florida tweeted Monday that what happened in Oldsmar should be treated as a matter of national security.

While JEA continues to monitor water quality, JEA officials said they will continue to monitor the investigation in Oldsmar to see if there is anything they can learn from the safety breach.

At around 16:30 on Tuesday, more than 7 million computers worldwide were attacked by hackers.

Chris Hamer, a cyber security expert, said it was not necessarily home computers that attacked the hackers.

“It could be power stations, municipal water supply services, public transportation systems, hospitals’ law enforcement,” Hamer said. ‘Their intention is to gain control of the system so that they can redeem it, invade the accounting system to get themselves a refund or eliminate their account, or to compensate everyone’s account for misfortune, or they tour to see what they can see. ”

In the case of the Oldsmar water system cap, investigators said it was not immediately clear where the attack was coming from. According to Hamer, there is a chance that the hacker could get into the system through a malicious email or a non-secure remote desktop program.

‘They are on the internet all the time and they are constantly ringing through the doorbell ringing, and in this case answering most of the programs by identifying what the actual process is. “Once it is cataloged, these people will continue to try different passwords until they enter,” said Hamer.

So if a system has little or no security, Hamer said, it does not take much effort to infiltrate the system.

.Source

Share this:

Related