Monitoring water infrastructure facilities, source water, and other assets is an important task for ensuring the safety and security of utility operations. To help with that, EPA’s Water Infrastructure and Cyber Resilience Division (WICRD) created three publicly available guidance documents to assist utilities with designing and implementing physical security monitoring. Water and wastewater utilities are encouraged to review these resources for guidance on leveraging security cameras at their facilities.
The WICRD resources support the design and implementation of Physical Security Monitoring (PSM), as component of a Surveillance and Response System (SRS). According to EPA, PSM involves the use of equipment and procedures to detect and respond to security breaches at distribution system facilities that are vulnerable to contamination or other malicious activity. It is operated in collaboration with local law enforcement to ensure timely response to alerts from security systems such as door and hatch contact switches, video monitoring systems, and video analytics. The three guidance documents are available via the links below or can be accessed at EPA here.
- Designing Physical Security Monitoring for SRSs (pdf) - Provides guidance for enhancing security monitoring at utility facilities in a distribution system that are determined to be at risk of intentional contamination.
- Commissioning Security Systems for Drinking Water Utilities (pdf) - Provides a step-wise process for verifying that security systems installed at drinking water utility facilities perform according to specifications.
- Guidance for Designing Communications Systems for Water Quality Surveillance and Response Systems (pdf) - Guidance document that covers the design of communications systems used to transmit data from remote monitoring locations to a control center.
As WaterISAC previously reported, a Water Quality Surveillance and Response System (WQ-SRS) is a framework designed to support monitoring and management of distribution system water quality, according to WICRD. The system consists of one or more components that augment a water utility’s capability to quickly detect and respond to water quality issues. Read more about WQ-SRS here.
