Cybersecurity for Water Operations
Safeguarding water infrastructure in connected facilities
Protecting water and wastewater systems requires cybersecurity that safeguards infrastructure while keeping essential services reliable and resilient.
By securing connected technologies, operational systems, and critical data, water utilities can reduce cyber risk and protect the communities that depend on them every day.
350+
Protocols
Including Modbus, DNP3, IEC 60870-5-104, OPC, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, S7, and BACnet
30+
Discovery Methods
Passive-first visibility for process networks that cannot tolerate conventional IT tooling
Any Site
Fully Air-Gapped · OnPrem · Hybrid · Cloud
Portable, virtual, and PCAP-based options for remote and low-bandwidth sites
Cyber Risk Needs the Same Oversight As Water Quality
Treatment plants, distribution systems, pump stations, and enterprise systems depend on persistent internet communications. Just one cyber incident can affect water delivery, day-to-day operations, regulatory obligations, and public confidence.
The challenge is knowing where operational risk resides. The Forescout Vistaro™ platform helps water and wastewater management facilities understand what happens if a risk turns into a breach, and what to do so that services that impact water treatment, pumping, chemical dosing, storage, or distribution aren’t disrupted.
See Assets Across Your Entire Utility
Move beyond disconnected spreadsheets and faciity-specific inventories and maintain a continuously updated view of every asset.
Understand Dependencies Between Facilities
Map how systems, vendor remote access, and control centers communicate so that a you can see where a failure or compromise might impact water production or distribution.
Prioritize Risk Based on Service Delivery
Not every vulnerability carries the same consequences. Prioritize remediation based on an asset’s role combined with threat intelligence from CISA KEVs.
Limit Operational Disruption
Reduce the risk of lateral movement through policy-based segmentation and containment while preserving operational oversight and change-control processes.
Support Compliance, Audits, and Funding Requirements
Document risks, compensating controls, segmentation policies, and mitigation activities, and generate the evidence needed for assessments, grant applications, audits, board reporting, and regulatory reviews.
Help Small Teams Manage Large Environments
AI-assisted workflows help small operations and security teams identify the highest-priority issues, investigate incidents faster, and focus resources.
Protect Treatment Facilities, Remote Sites, and Control Centers
Forescout automatically classifies and enriches each cyber asset with operational context. The Vistaro platform helps understand existing traffic flows, model segmentation policies, and abnormal conditions in order to investigate incidents more efficiently, prioritize corrective actions, and manage operational risk with human in the loop decision making.
Sample Network Architecture in a Water Management and Wastewater Management Environment
Instead of manually piecing together information from multiple sites, the Forescout Vistaro platform helps teams identify problems earlier, verify operational impact, and take targeted actions. This sample architecture helps water utilities turn scattered operational and cybersecurity data into clear, actionable decisions. The result is faster issue investigation, prioritized risk remediation, reduced operational disruption, and improved resilience.
Webinar
Exposed OT, Real Consequences: Is Our Food and Water Supply at Risk?
What happens if water and cold storage systems are exposed online? Water utilities, supermarkets, and warehouses rely on remote connections to monitor equipment, troubleshoot issues, and perform maintenance.
Drawing on Forescout’s Vedere Labs investigations into internet-exposed control systems and IoT sensors, this session will help attendees evaluate the risks.
Recent Content
Secure Remote Access: the Door You Built Yourself
What CISA and the Five Eyes want from your secure remote access for OT, and how Forescout SRA and the Forescout Vistaro platform get you there.
OT Security Enters New Phase of Operational Risk Reduction
The Forrester Wave™: Operational Technology Security Solutions, Q3 2026 reports on the market’s evolution away from visibility toward risk context.
Cold Chain, Open Control: Exposed Refrigeration Systems Reveal Global Risk
Vedere Labs analyzes the recent attacks in France on refrigeration control systems that produced physical and financial damage without malware.
Secure Remote Access for OT: From Guidance to Architecture
Need to meet the secure connectivity principles for operational technology? Here’s how to use CISA’s Internet Exposure Reduction Guidance.
Flexible. Versatile. Rapid Deployment.
Forescout offers unmatched deployment flexibility to meet the diverse hardware and cloud requirements of modern environments. We ensure compatibility with existing infrastructures while minimizing operational disruption. This versatility makes it an ideal choice for your organization. If you seek robust, scalable solutions tailored to your unique operational and regulatory landscapes, look no further.
The Forescout Vistaro™ platform adapts seamlessly with options for on-premises installations, virtual machines and Docker-based containerized deployments, including:
- Air-gapped systems for high-security needs
- Forescout appliances that deliver maximum visibility and control
- Hybrid configurations to connect distributed sites
- Fully cloud-based operations for scalability
…and Sensors that can be deployed as:
- Standalone appliances
- Installed directly on routers and switches for quick implementation without production disruption
- Or configured as active sensors to query network infrastructure
Deploy Forescout on Phoenix Contact Security Solutions Industrial Switching Platform for enhanced security and simplified deployments
Reduce physical hardware and deploy Forescout in Azure – a scalable, robust and cost-effective solution
Deploy Forescout on Keysight packet brokers for efficient and scalable deployments
Leverage the Dell Validated Design for Energy Edge to deploy in substations with ABB and Forescout