The secure path to digital water: balancing efficiency and cybersecurity

Water treatment facilities are the invisible backbone of public health. They ensure safe drinking water for millions, treat wastewater to protect environmental quality and support everything from hospitals to manufacturing plants. When these systems fail — whether from aging infrastructure, natural disasters or cyberattacks — the consequences cascade through entire communities.

In recent years, these facilities have moved into the crosshairs of nation-state actors, ransomware groups and hacktivists. Since 2024, Britain’s drinking water suppliers have faced five cyberattacks. In the United States, a Texas water system overflowed after an attack was linked to Russian hacktivists. Across the country, Chinese hackers from a group called Volt Typhoon have burrowed deep inside American critical infrastructure, including water systems.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Cyberattacks on U.S. utilities surged 70% in 2024, and a Pacific Institute survey of 350 U.S. and British water and electricity firms revealed that 60% of respondents were targets of cyberattacks in 2024. Water infrastructure has become a prime target. This escalating threat creates a paralyzing dilemma for water system operators: They desperately need digital tools to improve efficiency and meet sustainability goals, but they fear that going digital means creating vulnerabilities.

Digital twins offer real solutions without inherently opening a back door for bad actors. They predict maintenance and identify equipment failures before they happen. They monitor in real time to provide visibility into network performance. They analyze data to optimize chemical dosing, reduce energy consumption and detect leaks that waste millions of gallons annually. The digital water market is already growing and, projected to surge from $11.5 billion in 2024 to $23.8 billion by 2033.

Yet operators sometimes hesitate to implement this technology. Headlines about hacked treatment plants and manipulated SCADA systems make the risks feel immediate. Many facilities deliberately keep systems offline, accepting operational inefficiencies rather than risk compromise. The question becomes: Can you modernize without creating new attack vectors?

Security as a foundational principle

Over the last decades, the modern workforce is using laptops, mobile devices, working remote from home offices, and accessing many systems during their workday. The operational landscape has shifted. Utilities are becoming more digital and data driven. With more users accessing internal systems, the notion of the ”air-gapped” SCADA system is increasingly a myth, not a security strategy.

In fact, 60% of confirmed breaches involve a human element such as error, manipulation, or misuse, according to Verizon’s 2025 DBIR. The threat landscape allows bad actors to target humans at an unprecedented scale. CrowdStrike’s 2026 Global Threat Report cites an 89% surge in AI-enabled attacks.

We can not keep employees from accessing systems, and modernization is already expanding the attack vectors. The answer is security by design. Modern solutions that ensure that users can only get access to the data and functions that are designated for them.

Veolia’s Hubgrade digital offering, spanning waste, water, energy and other environmental solutions, demonstrates that optimization and security aren’t opposing forces — they’re built together from the start.

Hubgrade Wastewater Plant Performance, one of the integrated solutions for wastewater treatment, exemplifies this approach. As part of Veolia's complete water treatment offering, this solution adheres to internationally recognized security standards, including ISO/IEC 27001 and NIST cybersecurity frameworks. It employs a zero-trust architecture, meaning every access request is verified, regardless of the source. Data moves through encrypted channels, hosted on certified redundant cloud infrastructure that supports security standards designed to meet global regulatory requirements. Continuous vulnerability management, regular security audits and microsegmentation create multiple layers of defense.

Security considerations shaped Hubgrade’s architecture from its inception, ensuring that the optimization capabilities operate on infrastructure designed to be resilient against attacks. It gives operators control over what they need, and with its role and permission system, it substitutes all unnecessary SCADA access securely. With Hubgrade, employees no longer need to access your most sensitive SCADA environment. Limitation of access is a foundational principle for reducing attack vectors in modern working environments.

What operators gain
This solution gives facility operators practical tools to improve daily operations. Real-time dashboards track key performance indicators across multiple sites, alerting teams to anomalies before they become problems. AI models find the optimal aeration and chemical dosing based on influent quality, biological capacity, weather patterns and regulatory targets, reducing cost while maintaining compliance and minimising environmental impact.

Hubgrade works seamlessly with Veolia's treatment technologies and services, ensuring that digital optimization enhances proven wastewater treatment expertise.

Operators can monitor and adjust treatment processes remotely, reducing remote site traveling and the need for after-hours site visits while maintaining full operational control. Hubgrade is a digital twin that automates the treatment process. The system is configured by operators to each facility’s performance, continuously based on what works in real-world conditions. Hubgrade complements rather than replaces your SCADA. It relies on the existing SCADA to control the plant, while implementing a “watchdog” strategy. This ensures that operators can set critical guardrails, allowing the SCADA to automatically limit the solution’s input, take over the operation or alert staff if operational boundaries are breached. This is a foundational element in our zero-trust architecture.

These capabilities translate into measurable results. At the Køge-Egnens wastewater treatment plant in Denmark, the solution’s intelligent control systems increased hydraulic capacity by 35-60% during rain events while improving nitrogen removal, eliminating the need for costly physical expansion of settling tanks. The Hubgrade Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, has helped facilities cut energy use by up to 35%, optimize chemical management despite supply chain challenges and extend equipment life through predictive monitoring.

More than 10,000 sites across 60 countries now operate on the broader Hubgrade offering, processing data from thousands of facilities while maintaining the security protocols that protect critical infrastructure.

Bridging the expertise gap
Water system operators excel at water treatment, not cybersecurity. The design of Hubgrade addresses this reality. Cybersecurity and operational security protocols operate transparently in the background. Security is no longer a burden for the facility manager; it is a built-in infrastructure standard managed by specialists. When operators access dashboards, adjust setpoints or review predictive alerts, the solution handles authentication and encryption while automatically logging any user access and changes to operational settings. Remote monitoring centers staffed by Veolia specialists can provide both operational guidance and security oversight, watching for process anomalies that could indicate either equipment issues or potential security concerns.

Small and mid-sized utilities can’t afford separate teams for optimization and security. Cybersecurity spending in the water sector is projected to grow at 7.5% annually through 2033, but many operators struggle to justify investments in security infrastructure that don’t directly improve water treatment.

Solutions that embed security within operational tools solve this problem. Operators get the efficiency improvements they need without managing the security complexity that typically comes with digital transformation. And that digital intelligence, when embedded within a complete water treatment solution, becomes a true competitive advantage for operators, lower cost and peace of mind for utilities

Water systems don’t need to choose between operational excellence and resilience against attack. They need partners who understand that in critical infrastructure, security isn’t a feature — it’s fundamental.

Veolia’s experience managing water, waste and energy systems globally has shaped our understanding of what secure optimization requires. Contact our experts to learn how Hubgrade can support your operations with the confidence that comes from security built into every layer.