Securing Drinking Water

Protecting A City’s Drinking Water Supply

 
Challenge: Securing a Watershed’s Critical Assets
After 9-11, the Federal Government required a major city’s utilities provider to undertake a utility-wide assessment to identify critical assets. The assessment revealed the watershed’s protection in place needed some improvement. The watershed protection manager, says, “We needed to track and electronically document traffic in and out of our facilities and watershed areas.” The drinking water supply from a nearby river is unfiltered so the watershed is completely closed to the public. No trespass of any kind is allowed. The utilities provider was tasked with meeting Federal Critical Infrastructure Guidelines for municipal water supplies. With over 30 gate entrances to the river alone, this presented unique challenges.

Solution: CyberLock
After extensive research, the utilities provider selected CyberLock to secure all the entrances to the watershed that had no available power to them. In June 2007, they proceeded to install CyberLocks on these remote watershed gates, storage units, and utility sheds. The provider also plans to expand the CyberLock system to include another 12,500-acre watershed due to similar challenges. A strong reason for implementing the CyberLock system was to maintain their Limited Alternative Filtration status on the river. “CyberLock helps us comply with Department of Health regulations by maintaining a closed and secure watershed,” says the manager.  
CyberLock allows the utilities provider to control the access of their contractors, employees, and researchers throughout the watershed. The audit trail the locks and keys provide is a good investigative tool when there is an incident on watershed property. “Being able to program each person’s key to open specific locks that allow them to do their job is a real benefit. CyberLock is an important part of [our] security plan-of-action that enables our watersheds to meet Federal Guidelines for securing critical infrastructure,” the manager says.
iCrescendo was awarded the contract to train the provider’s employees in implementing CyberLock best practices.  From project kick-off through go-live, iCrescendo worked closely with the manager and his staff to ensure the project stayed on schedule and on budget. CyberAudit-Web On-Demand continues to play a critical role in the post-implementation phase. It enables the team to increase operational efficiency and reduces on-going maintenance cost.