On Thursday, July 30, 2020, WaterISAC joined Perch for a webinar on collecting, detecting, and responding to threat intelligence. WaterISAC Managing Director, Michael Arceneaux offered opening remarks. Perch Security’s CISO, Wes Spencer, and Director of Threat Research, Paul Scott shared thoughts on community-based threat intelligence and threat activty in the Water and Wastewater Sector. And not that we don’t love Perch Security, but the star of the show was unequivocally Barry Blanchard, IT Manager of Onondaga County Water Authority (OCWA). The biggest value to any presentation is hearing from our peers. As such, WaterISAC was proud to have Barry share his perspective on Perch with the WaterISAC community. Barry described his journey on how Perch and WaterISAC helped him go from, “how do you know?” to “now you know!” Barry is not a “cybersecurity guy,” but like many members he assumes that role. Back in 2017 Barry was not comfortable answering the “how do you know if you’ve been breached” question. But after a webinar with WaterISAC and Perch he said, “Ah-ha! I think if we had that system we would know whether or not we had a breach.” Furthermore, he was at a loss with all of the security releases and threat information inundating him every day. His go-to, “In all the different emails and information, I like to read the ones that come from WaterISAC. Reason is, they are dedicated to the water industry, not just cybersecurity – it’s cybersecurity for IT and OT –  it’s other physical security related to the water industry.” According to Barry, one of the best parts is that Perch automatically and continuously loads indicators from those security releases into his Perch sensor for detection and triage by the Perch SOC, so he doesn’t have to. However, as Barry highlighted Perch does offer the autonomy to add your own internal alerts to activity that concerns you (with or without Perch’s help). Unlike Wes and Paul, Barry doesn’t talk cybersecurity at the dinner table, but he does sleep better at night knowing the Perch SOC is there to evaluate alerts and escalate activity of concern so he can have peace of mind answering the question “have you had a breach.”

If you missed the webinar, would like to listen to it again, or would like to share it with your peers, access it at Perch Security, now!