The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has adopted a Cyber Informed Engineering (CIE) approach to water cybersecurity, a concept pioneered by the Idaho National Laboratory. CIE aims to engineer secure systems by including design elements that minimize or thwart cyberattacks. This approach assumes that systems will be hacked and takes proactive steps to build in mechanical security measures that limit the impact when this occurs.
Idaho has integrated CIE into its State Revolving Fund (SRF) funding through a competitive letter of interest process for grants and loans. Through this process, DEQ has created a new incentive for projects to integrate CIE into their facility plans, assigning greater weight to CIE principles than other elements during the scoring process.
Idaho offers resources such as its Customer Handbook to assist applicants with the DEQ SRF funding process and project execution, which includes CIE checklists. Learn more about Idaho’s CIE approach by viewing this recorded webinar.
