Hicksville Water District Is 'Keeping Your Water Safe And Secure'

Press release from Hicksville Water District:

Feb. 26, 2021

The Hicksville Water District (HWD) would like to reassure its residents that despite a recent hacking attempt at a Florida water treatment facility, your public drinking water supply remains safe and secure. Cyber security threats are top of mind for the District and why it dedicates significant resources to its security systems with many fail-safes embedded to continuously protect the community’s drinking water from any outside threat.

“Despite this brief scare for this Florida water supplier, our residents can rest assured that even if someone were skilled enough to break into our extremely secure system, we have other redundancies, procedures and devices in place to prevent our water from being impacted,” said HWD Chairman Karl Schweitzer. “We are constantly consulting with security experts to make sure our systems are as protected as possible, including advanced 24/7 monitoring that continuously searches for any change in water quality.”

At the Oldsmar, Florida water facility, a hacker broke into their system and remotely accessed controls. Based on the details of the incident released, it was determined that our District does not have the vulnerabilities that were exploited by the hacker. However, we realize that cyber security is an ongoing process that requires continuous vigilance. Rest assured that the HWD takes cyber threats seriously and has proactive measures in place to address the same.

For more information, please contact the Hicksville Water District at 516-931-0184 or visit www.hicksvillewater.org.

This press release was produced by Hicksville Water District. The views expressed here are the author's own.