All About SCADA Systems

Mission vital  Techniques for the Energy Industry

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) methods that pick-up and manage data across a large facility from a central pc, play an important role in the utility industry, supporting to manage large and diverse info loads from power plants of all types. Interconnectivity has made all these techniques increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

The Growing Vulnerability of SCADA Control Techniques

The control systems for the electric grid used to run in a stand-alone environment without personal computer  or communication links to an external Info  Technology (IT) infrastructure. In the last fifteen years such stand-alone enclaves have been increasingly connected to both the corporate environment and the external world, and the utility SCADA techniques are no exception. computer system and communication network interconnection brings with it the possible for cyber attacks on these techniques by adversaries. This is a critical challenge since this sort of attack can affect various  entities across the country simultaneously. Such attacks get the enhanced possible to cause a cascading negative effect to the Bulk Power System.

SCADA Control System Threats Are More Vulnerable Than ever

SCADA techniques are coming in line with normal networking technologies. Today's generation of SCADA security is increasingly utilizing open system architecture to distribute functionality across a wide-area network (WAN) for communication amongst the master station and communications equipment. SCADA methods are becoming ubiquitous. Thin clients, web portals, and web-based items are gaining popularity with virtually all major companies. The increased convenience of end end users viewing their processes remotely introduces protection considerations resulting in SCADA-based techniques being vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The mission-critical nature of a large quantity of SCADA methods makes them targets of cyber-terrorist. In a worst case scenario, failure of a SCADA system could lead to massive economic losses via loss of data or actual physical destruction, misuse or theft, even loss of life, either indirectly or directly. SCADA methods no longer have the benefit of security-through obscurity that can have existed in the past from the use of specialized protocols and proprietary interfaces. Increasingly, SCADA networks are being connected to the internet. Similar to other networked technologies, SCADA networks must have physical, administrative, and technical security safeguards. Security and authentication in designing, deploying, and operating SCADA networks is critical. One example is, security gadgets like IPS/IDS, firewalls, and other technological protection measures need to be deployed to help protect SCADA methods. Automated protection info management solutions also are  needed to help consolidate the security logs across the SCADA system wide-area network. Also see industrial network security and industrial networking solutions