Friday Afternoon in the Control Room
05 · DEFEND — A practical cybersecurity tabletop for water and wastewater operations. Water and wastewater facilities depend on SCADA, PLCs, remote access and legacy equipment that span treatment plants, pump and lift stations, distribution networks and collection systems. Cyber readiness is an operational discipline, not a fear campaign. Utility, IT, OT, vendor and executive teams need clear responsibilities and workable fallback procedures before an incident tests them. What we will examine: treatment plants, pump and lift stations, distribution and collection systems, SCADA and PLCs, remote and vendor access, legacy equipment, IT/OT responsibilities, manual operation and recovery. Each webinar is followed by a Post-Event Intelligence Report that captures the key findings, evidence, practical guidance, audience questions and speaker information from the session — a permanent reference designed to support decisions after the live discussion ends.
Key Takeaways
- Understand the most common pathways by which cyber incidents can reach utility operational systems.
- Learn where IT responsibility ends and operational-technology responsibility begins.
- Identify practical steps utilities can take to reduce risk without replacing entire control environments.
- Leave with a framework for discussing cybersecurity with vendors, IT departments and executive leadership.
Why Attend?
A cyber incident in a treatment plant becomes an operations problem within minutes. Working through the decisions in a tabletop is far cheaper than discovering them live.
Who Should Attend
- Water and wastewater operations leaders
- SCADA, OT and instrumentation teams
- IT and cybersecurity staff
- Utility executives, emergency managers and vendors
Agenda
- 0:00 Scenario briefing: treatment operations, remote vendor access and a Friday afternoon
- 0:10 Detection and the first decisions across IT and operational technology
- 0:30 Operating pump stations, lift stations and treatment processes with SCADA isolated
- 0:50 Containment, communication, vendor coordination and recovery
- 1:10 Debrief: practical controls that reduce risk in legacy environments
- 1:25 Audience Q&A
