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As the UK water sector continues to modernise, the conversation around resilience is changing. Environmental performance, leakage reduction and asset health remain priorities, but digital systems now sit at the heart of how water is produced and delivered. As a result, cyber resilience is no longer separate from operational resilience – the two are now closely linked.
The National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) is playing an increasingly important role in helping water companies understand their digital risk, strengthen governance and ensure that essential services remain stable, even as systems become more complex.
Digital water: opportunity meets complexity
Digital transformation is reshaping the water industry. IoT sensors, cloud-based monitoring, automation, and data-driven optimisation are enabling smarter networks and more efficient operations. But as adoption increases, so does complexity.
Operational Technology (OT) and IT environments are now deeply interconnected. Legacy systems sit alongside modern cloud services and third-party platforms, with data flowing across entire supply chains. These dependencies introduce risks that traditional engineering-led approaches were never designed to manage.
For many water companies, the question is no longer whether digital systems introduce vulnerability, but how to create the visibility and governance needed to manage it effectively.
Why CAF matters for the water sector
Across the UK water sector, organisations are beginning to embed the CAF into day-to-day operations, and some clear trends are emerging.
One of the most significant shifts is improved visibility of the digital estate. Water companies are building detailed inventories of their operational technology, IT systems, cloud environments and data flows. This level of visibility has become the foundation for understanding operational and cyber risk, particularly as OT and IT continue to converge and as digital water systems grow more interconnected.
CAF is also driving improvements in monitoring and detection. Many utilities are expanding their visibility into OT environments, strengthening logging and adopting more proactive threat-led detection approaches. This marks a move away from traditional, perimeter-focused security towards continuous cyber resilience.
Supplier assurance has also matured. As water operations rely on an increasingly complex network of third-party suppliers and technology partners, CAF is helping organisations assess supplier resilience more consistently. This has led to clearer insights into external dependencies and where contractual or technical controls need to be strengthened.
Incident response is another area seeing tangible progress. Scenario-based exercises, from ransomware incidents to cyber-physical disruptions, are being used to test whether plans work in practice, not just on paper. These exercises help teams identify gaps, improve communication and refine escalation processes before a real incident occurs.
Many water companies are also aligning CAF with existing frameworks such as ISO 27001. This reduces duplication, clarifies ownership and creates a more joined-up approach to resilience. Rather than treating CAF as a standalone requirement, organisations are embedding it within broader risk and compliance programmes.
Moving beyond compliance
Early adopters of CAF are already seeing wider benefits. These organisations report stronger alignment across teams, clearer insight into digital and supply-chain risk and a more compelling case for investing in resilience. They are also better prepared for regulatory scrutiny, particularly as CAF 4.0 raises expectations across the sector.
Crucially, the most successful organisations are using CAF to embed long-term resilience thinking into planning, decision-making and daily operations.
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