Watershed 250 Promises Free Cyber Resources for Small Water Utilities
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross Monday announced the launch of Project Watershed 250, connecting Texas water utilities with free cyber defense resources in a pilot program the Trump administration hopes to scale nationwide.
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“Project Watershed 250 is a commitment from the states, industry and federal government that we will continue to prioritize our nation’s safety and deliver on America-first policies,” Cairncross said at the launch event in San Antonio.
The program will be underwritten by a dozen cybersecurity vendors, Abbott said. The project will combine “the experience of private sector businesses with the expertise of the Texas Cyber Command.”
“Our communities and water systems will be better secured from the onslaught of cyberattacks,” he declared.
The Texas Cyber Command was set up by the state legislature last year. It “defends state and local systems, coordinates incident response and works with federal partners to protect critical infrastructure,” according to Abbott’s office.
The governor was joined by TCC Chief retired Vice Admiral TJ White, and executives from the private sector companies who’ve pledged to take part: Abnormal AI, AWS, Cloudflare, Dragos, Forescout, Fortinet, Google Cloud, Palo Alto Networks, Parsons, Reflection AI, Tenable and Zscaler.
“This is going to be an opportunity to meet folks where they are and to help them, not just to build resilience for when that bad day comes, but also give them some defensive capability,” Alison King, vice president of government affairs at Forescout Technologies, told ISMG.
“We’re really excited to be able to demonstrate that our technology, our services and our expertise doesn’t only just apply to big organizations, organizations that have a lot of resources,” she said.
“We’re not going to make these folks into Fortune 500 companies,” she said. Smaller, less resourced organizations like rural water cooperatives “don’t have the time, the resources, or the personnel. But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to leave them defenseless.”
Calling the level of commitment from Forescout “very high,” King said she wasn’t able to put a dollar value on the assistance they would be providing yet because they were still waiting to find out exactly what was involved.
White will shortly assemble the private sector partners “and provide more insight into the scope of the effort,” she said.
Forescout is finalizing legal paperwork to move the company headquarters from California to Plano, Texas, where the company’s engineering team and a total of 200-plus staff were already based, King explained.
“This is our backyard. We rely on the utilities supplying vital services in Texas just like everyone else there,” she said.
But the problem with free cybersecurity equipment is that “it is free like puppies, not free like beer,” said Josh Corman, executive in residence for public safety and resilience at the Institute for Security and Technology.
“If you’re given a puppy, you have to care for it, feed it, clean up behind it,” Corman told ISMG. Similarly, cybersecurity equipment needs to be installed and maintained, which takes resources. In a small organization with no dedicated cyber staff, other personnel have to be pulled away from their core functions so they can be trained and then use it.
Nonetheless, Corman welcomed Project Watershed 250, saying “I applaud anything that draws attention to this problem.”
Corman is the founder of I Am The Cavalry, one of the earliest cybersecurity community activities aimed at helping secure America’s vital facilities, and he’s the convenor of the Fragile Foundations Sprint, a 100-day long effort launching later this week to address how their lack of resources and cyber capabilities impacts many small-to-medium or rural critical infrastructure providers.
“We hope we can work with Texas on their important pilot,” he added.
