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TCEQ emergency preparedness unit urges utilities to include cybersecurity incident reporting in incident-response plans
Summary
TCEQ’s emergency preparedness team advised public water systems to have incident response plans that include immediate steps for a cyber event and to report cyber incidents to TCEQ and other state resources within specified time frames.
Irina Kushniewski, section manager for Emergency Preparedness and Response, told the work group that drinking-water systems should include cybersecurity incidents in their incident-response plans and be prepared to disconnect internet access and notify appropriate agencies immediately.
Irina recommended adding the TCEQ incident-reporting phone number (available 24/7) to systems’ plans and stressed that local governments must report security incidents to the TCEQ within 48 hours. She highlighted that the Department of Information Resources provides incident-response plan templates and assistance for local governments and that the Texas Attorney General requires businesses that experience a data breach affecting 25 or more people to submit an online data-breach report within 30 days of discovery.
TCEQ has a resource page aggregating federal and state cybersecurity resources and agencies that can assist systems during an attack. Irina said the Emergency Preparedness team was newly assigned responsibility for reviewing project-information-form rankings with TWDB and would apply compliance and ranking checks during SRF funding reviews.
TCEQ staff reiterated: if a system suspects a cyber intrusion, it should disconnect affected systems as needed, call the 24/7 TCEQ incident number and engage state cyber resources; plans should document the before-during-after steps and include contact numbers for state resources and support agencies.
