Risks of cyber attack to water utility supervisory control and data acquisition systems

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems control US water supply and treatment processes. The President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure identified cyber terrorism as a threat to our critical infrastructure. The commission stated that waiting for a [cyber] disaster is a dangerous strategy. Barry Ezell, Yacov Haimes and Jim Lambert developed a probabilistic risk assessment and decision-making methodology to assess and manage the risks of willful threats to water utility SCADA systems. The framework may assist decision-makers in understanding the risks of cyber intrusion, and their consequences and associated tradeoffs, in order to improve the survivability of the system.