Cyberattacks against water utilities across the country are becoming more frequent and more severe, the Environmental Protection Agency warned Monday as it issued an enforcement alert urging water systems to take immediate actions to protect the nation’s drinking water.
About 70% of utilities inspected by federal officials over the last year violated standards meant to prevent breaches or other intrusions, the agency said. Officials urged even small water systems to improve protections against hacks. Recent cyberattacks by groups affiliated with Russia and Iran have targeted smaller communities.
Some water systems are falling short in basic ways, the alert said, including failure to change default passwords or cut off system access to former employees. Because water utilities often rely on computer software to operate treatment plants and distribution systems, protecting information technology and process controls is crucial, the EPA said. Possible impacts of cyberattacks include interruptions to water treatment and storage; damage to pumps and valves; and alteration of chemical levels to hazardous amounts, the agency said.
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McCabe named China, Russia and Iran as the countries that are “actively seeking the capability to disable U.S. critical infrastructure, including water and wastewater.”
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ProTip: Contest your electric bills. Most states allow you to do so and the utility company will have to provide your meter reading data to back up the bill.
Is there any guarantee the utility company won’t just drop you like a rock when they’re fed up with contesting bills? (That is a serious question, most of us are locked in by utility monopolies so if that is a risk it would be borderline life ruining)
No. Large commercial customers contest their bills constantly.
I would guess that in many (or even most) areas that don’t have municipal utilities, the commercial utility is under no legal obligation to provide their service to you. Otherwise, they couldn’t shut off people’s electricity or water for non-payment.
They cannot legally do that in most areas. So long as you pay your actually bills they have to serve you. If you contest the bills and then never pay when the real bill is given they can disconnect you, but so long as you pay up they have to serve you. Where I live even if they disconnect you they have to reconnect you every winter.
Note that if you contest bills that are correct they can sue you. It isn’t worth their time if it is just you (they would spend a million dollars in legal fees to get $1000), but if people start contesting legitimate bills they will start making examples of the loudest people. Pay your legitimate bills without complaint is the best advice here. Contest if they actually are wrong, this can happen, but it isn’t common.
If you cannot pay your utility bills contact your utility - they are programs in place for the poor and they will guide you to them (they want their money, they don’t care where it comes from)
And here lies the problem. It is actually very common. I know of one major utility company that has been “estimating” 70%+ of their residential bills for years. They cannot get a handle on it and they haven’t had full, clean data for years…so how are they estimating? They aren’t. They are guesstimates. That’s why they hired us.
That’s the most extreme case due to the sheer number of households, but most do it. We only have one customer that has hired us to help them achieve their goal of zero estimates. One. Most just want to reach “good enough for minimum regulatory compliance”.
Our water and electric data is collected from wireless readers. Are you saying they are not reporting accurately?
I’m skirting really close to my NDA here but think about this. Imagine a city has ~3,000,000 active meters. Each meter polls every five minutes or so (more often if it is a gas meter). Legal retention is about seven years. Usage reports are due to market daily. Given that this is exclusively a cost, executives aren’t keen on throwing buckets of money at it. So, in this “imaginary” scenario, what are the odds that things will go smoothly?