Sep 23, 2026 · 34 min
Small water utilities face a national cybersecurity test
The hunters go after the bureau.
The episode shows how underfunded water systems can move from reactive incident response toward durable protection of essential services.
- 1Ransomware reached a 2026 monthly high, with North American industrial organizations bearing much of the reported impact.
- 2Project Watershed 250 pairs public agencies and private providers to assess, harden, and monitor small water utilities.
- 3The initiative offers free assistance, but sustainable funding for staffing, licensing, and lifecycle support remains unresolved.
Don't miss
Jen Sovada explains how Project Watershed 250 will scale cybersecurity help across Texas’s roughly 10,000 water and wastewater facilities.
The brief
The briefing opens with Britain’s No. 3 Space Effects Squadron, a new Royal Air Force unit focused on protecting satellites and disrupting hostile activity in orbit.
It then turns to ransomware, reporting 1,073 worldwide victims in August—the highest monthly total of 2026—with North America and industrial organizations especially affected.
The central interview features Claroty’s Jen Sovada on Project Watershed 250, which aims to help small U.S. water utilities assess IT and operational-technology risks.
Texas provides the starting point: roughly 10,000 water and wastewater facilities create a large, varied environment where connected assets and remote access can be difficult to see.
The project promises assessments, red teaming, hardening, technology guidance, AI assistance, and remediation at no cost to utilities, but long-term funding is still unsettled.
Sovada frames the effort as a public-health and trust issue: resilience depends on moving utilities from reactive response toward proactive defense.
