Defendify Named Founding Provider of Water Watch Center for Rural Utilities

The Water Watch Center builds on a two-year effort in which DEF CON Franklin recruited nearly 450 volunteer hackers to work directly with water and wastewater utilities in seven states. Defendify and its four fellow founding providers will help water utilities across the United States, including small and rural utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people. Those make up 91% of the roughly 150,000 community water systems in the country.

The initiative is led by the National Rural Water Association and DEF CON Franklin with support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies. DARPA and Vanderbilt University's Institute for Software Integrated Systems are also participating, building "digital twins" of Water Watch Center utility environments. The goal is to test and refine automated defensive approaches, with the long-term aim of broader deployment.

Simopoulos added that being a founding provider means Defendify's team is in the room from day one, collaborating with the other providers and adapting as the program grows. "Our goal is to give even the smallest participating water utilities access to the kind of monitoring and response available to much larger organizations, without requiring the budget or in-house expertise they simply don't have."

Defendify, based in Portland, Maine, serves organizations seeking cybersecurity without operational complexity. The company's all-in-one platform is designed for small and mid-sized teams. The Water Watch Center will share threat intelligence across its providers, and Defendify will contribute its own monitoring data to the collective effort. DARPA's digital twin project is expected to run through 2027.