Accenture, Dragos, SANS Commit $10M To Help Small Utilities

Accenture, Dragos and the SANS Institute announced the Community Cyber Resilience Foundation on Tuesday. The initiative will provide free cybersecurity tools, equipment, deployment assistance and employee training to up to 500 U.S. water, wastewater, electric and natural gas utilities.

The program is open to utilities with annual revenue below $100 million, including those serving rural and underserved communities. The organizations estimate that more than 50,000 U.S. utilities, or over 97% of the total, meet the revenue requirement.

Each participating utility will receive access to the Dragos Platform and related services. Accenture will handle installation, system integration and ongoing support. The foundation will finance the hardware needed to operate the platform.

SANS will train utility employees in industrial control system and operational technology security. The training is intended to help staff manage their cybersecurity defenses internally. The foundation will also connect participating utilities through a peer network for sharing operational experience.

The organizations cited limited cybersecurity budgets, staffing shortages and aging technology among the challenges facing small utilities. They also cited attacks on more than 100 U.S. water systems across more than a dozen states.

“Adversaries are aggressively targeting utilities, attacking the operational environments that provide life-sustaining services to millions of Americans. Yet many small operators lack the capacity to defend against these threats,” Dragos CEO Robert M. Lee said in a statement.

The foundation builds on Dragos’ Community Defense Program, which has provided more than 100 utilities with free access to the Dragos Platform. Dragos launched that program in December 2023 for U.S. utilities with annual revenue below $100 million.

The announcement came four months after Accenture agreed to acquire a majority stake in Dragos as part of an operational technology cybersecurity investment valued at roughly $4.1 billion.