Texas water and wastewater utilities will receive free cybersecurity assistance under a new six-month pilot designed to identify vulnerabilities in critical water infrastructure and test a model that could be expanded nationwide.
Under Project Watershed 250, federal and private-sector resources will be available to Texas water and wastewater utilities to protect their systems from cyberattacks. The program is especially significant for smaller and rural systems that may not have the resources or expertise to adequately protect themselves.
The assistance may include cybersecurity testing and technical assistance from private-sector companies, including vulnerability assessments, red-team exercises and efforts to strengthen their systems. The effort will also use artificial intelligence tools to help identify and respond to cyber threats. Officials said the goal is to proactively find and fix weaknesses in water and wastewater systems that adversaries could exploit.
Texas was selected for the pilot as the state works to strengthen cybersecurity across its critical infrastructure and responds to attacks targeting water systems. The Texas Cyber Command, created by the Legislature in 2025 with a $135 million investment, will help coordinate the Texas side of the effort with federal officials and private-sector partners. State officials have described Texas Cyber Command as the nation’s largest state-based cybersecurity department.
The state also has firsthand experience cyberattacks on water systems, including a 2024 attack on the Muleshoe water system that officials suspected was carried out by Russian hackers. In that attack, hackers changed settings in the water system, causing a municipal water tank to overflow. Plant operators were able to resolve the situation by taking manual control of the system and maintaining the safety of the community’s drinking water. The group that claimed responsibility for the attack also posted a video showing the manipulation of the water system’s controls.
Twelve private-sector companies are participating in Watershed 250, bringing cybersecurity, artificial intelligence capabilities and other technologies to the initiative. Among the participants are Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Parsons and Palo Alto Networks.
The initiative comes as U.S. water systems face a growing number of cyberattacks. More than 30 municipal water systems in 12 states were targeted in a recent campaign that U.S. officials have linked to Iran. The White House said Project Watershed 250 had been in development since last year, before the recent attacks.
Cyberattacks on water and wastewater systems could have physical consequences for communities by changing how much water flows and at what rate, potentially resulting in flooding, sewage backups and other problems. Manipulation of data also could produce false readings and lead to operational failures. The six-month pilot is intended to identify what cybersecurity approaches work for water utilities and develop a model that could be scaled to water and wastewater systems nationwide.
Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels
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