Water/Wastewater facilities can be some of the harshest workplaces: corrosive environments, lightning-prone pump stations, and facilities spread across square miles, not square feet and run by a minimal crew watching all of it. When a terminal fails 40 miles from the nearest technician, “send someone to reinstall the HMI” isn’t a real option. Having things this spread out can create a real management risk.
Water and wastewater facilities also carry a second, quieter risk most industries don’t: their control systems have become a documented target for cyberattacks in recent years, with at least one U.S. utility forced into manual fallback after a breach in 2023. [Source] As recently as this summer 2026, multiple U.S. facilities have experienced some sort of cyberattack. [Source 2] When the footprint is this distributed, it demands critical infrastructure hygiene to coordinate exactly who can access what, and from where.