A Risk and Resilience Assessment is a formal review used in critical infrastructure to identify where a system is vulnerable and how well it can keep operating under stress. In the water sector, an RRA looks at both cyber and physical risks: exposed remote access, weak passwords, unpatched devices, limited asset visibility, aging control equipment, and dependencies between IT and OT systems.
RRA matters because it turns abstract security concerns into a practical plan. Defenders use it to prioritize protections, decide which assets are most important, and test how disruptions would affect pumps, monitoring, and service continuity. In real attacks or outages, the findings help operators prepare fallback procedures, strengthen backups, and reduce downtime. An effective RRA does not assume every incident is malicious; it helps a utility be ready for both cyber interference and equipment failure.