Security Review – Fire Hydrants
This is a security review of a fascinating device known as a fire hydrant. To state the obvious, a fire hydrant is designed to allow certain city personnel (firefighters) access to high pressure water in the case of an emergency. They need quick access and proximity to the water, so hydrants must be scattered throughout the city (or campus). Because there are so many of them, they should be cheap to make and cheap to keep adversaries from tampering with them.
Assets/Security Goals
As stated above, the main asset of a fire hydrant is fast access to water in the case of an emergency. Another asset is to provide water for commercial purposes through the use of a permit. Fire hydrants could even be used as a fountain for cooling off in the summer.
The security goal is for only authorized personnel to use these publicly placed hydrants.
Potential Threads/Adversaries
We want to protect from the threat of wasted water and a drain on the city’s water pressure (as in a coordinated attack, simultaneously activating hydrants across campus). The people who would like to pull off such a stunt, the adversaries, are most likely just miscreants with nothing better to do. The adversary could also be young kids who are simply curious, or as stated earlier, a group looking to cool off. Either way, they could loosen the hydrant and make a mess to the surrounding area and waste water that the city is paying for. It’s also the job of the city to keep the citizens safe. Tampering with a hydrant could potentially be physically dangerous, and even cooling off in the water has led to accidents: people have been hit by traffic while playing in the water in the street.
Weaknesses
The main weakness of a fire hydrant is the fact that many can simply be opened with a large wrench. It is also a weakness that there are so many hydrants and their placement is such that anyone has easy access to them
Potential Defenses
Nevertheless they are defended from tampering by the fact that you need at least a large wrench, and in some cases special tools that most people don’t have access to. They are also defended from abuse simply by the fact that their public placement will immediately lead a passerby to suspicion. For example, city officials would should use the hydrants are typically uniformed and it’s clear that they are simply doing their job.
However, the lack of a strongly motivated adversary is really what best protects fire hydrants from tampering – no significant security measures are necessary, because few have the motive to tamper with them. And if they did tamper with them, say a company that water to steal the water for their own purposes, the city is very likely to notice given the public placement of hydrants. Many hydrants also require special equipment which keeps the average person from doing any damage.
Risk Analysis
The risk to the city is very low. The lack of any significantly motivated threats nearly brings the risk to nil. If some asset, the water, is lost, it can quickly be detected before there has been a significant monetary loss (water is cheap).
Conclusions
All and all hydrants get the job done with very little tampering or abuse. The need for special tools virtually prevents all casual tampering (i.e. cooling off in the summer), and the law is on the side of the city when companies attempt to steal water from the hydrants – in the long term, public placement will make criminal uses of the water obvious. Such deterrents make criminal use and tampering practically a non-issue (or next to no risk) for any city.