Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Engineering News-Record
Copyright 2002 McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Monday, July 15, 2002
Vol. 249, No. 3
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: RISK ASSESSMENT
How Safe is Your Sewerage?
Tom Sawyer
NEW SOFTWARE FOR IDENTIFYING, analyzing, prioritizing and remediating
security risks at wastewater treatment utilities is being packaged for free
distribution July 22.
The product, VSAT, or "Vulnerability Self Assessment Tool," has been
created with help and $500,000 funding from the federal Environmental
Protection Agency by the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies. AMSA
promotes sound, scientific and cost effective laws and regulation of the
industry.
"VSAT is a system to rate all of your assets on the degree to which you
believe they are vulnerable. It will give you a priority of what you need to
do first and then give you the options, the costs associated with those, the
time it may take and the technology available to remediate them," says Adam
Krantz, a spokesman for AMSA.
Krantz noted that most people see the need for assuring the security of
drinking water systems, but he says the security vulnerabilities of wastewater
systems are "actually a lot more numerous." He points out that the systems
require storage of large quantities of chemicals, are potentially vulnerable
to computer hackers and disruptions that could cause dire consequences, and
are composed of large conduit systems that snake through cities underground.
Details for obtaining the software will be posted at
www.vsat.net on the
shipping date.