Following cyber-attacks last year against Israel's water utilities, the Authority has moved to enhance security.
Israel's water system came under major attacks last year by what foreign intelligence sources described as an attempt by Iran to disrupt the country's critical infrastructure. The apparent goal of the attacks was to raise the level of chlorine in the water supply by changing the logic of the Programmable Logic Controller without raising any alarms. These attacks, together with other attacks on US water facilities, highlighted the vulnerability of global water infrastructure and the necessity for independent and reliable monitoring solutions.
The Israel Water Authority has now announced the selection of Israel's SIGA OT Solutions and its SigaGuard system to counter cyber-threats to the machinery and equipment that comprise the critical infrastructure which operates in the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technologies (OT) environments. SigaGuard also deals with ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure, which are now an even more common threat.
SigaGuard provides security in the operational information layer (Level 0), which is not subject to external manipulations and is therefore the most suitable level for defending water utilities. SigaGuard "listens" to the rich and un-hackable electrical signals of the water treatment process and leverages advanced AI engines and machine learning to detect initial evolvements of anomalies in the process behavior and gains direct visibility into the OT process.
Amir Samoiloff, co-founder and CEO of SIGA said, "Water utilities are at the forefront of global cyber-attacks. But utilities have minimal tolerance for a downtime in service and no utility would agree to a hacker deciding whether its infrastructure will operate or not. The hacker's actual attack surface on water utilities is limited, and SIGA has the most suitable solution to deal with this threat, from both the cyber capability and operational standpoint. Our solution is simple, easy to install and is focused on Level 0 monitoring - the level where the sensors and actuators of the water infrastructure are located."