BLUF
In the United States, SCADA is used on a regular basis to ensure that our key pieces of infrastructure are safe and operational.

What is SCADA?
In the technological realm, SCADA generally refers to supervisory control and data acquisition. This is the technical jargon for being the portal of the infrastructure that detects and analyzes error messages. There are many forms of SCADA software including the human machine interface (HMI) which gives a diagram to the user on where the error is occurring on the piece of machinery. It can give diagrams of the pipe leading into and out of a pump house to show changes in pressure or abnormal temperatures just to list a few ways the SCADA systems are used. (SCADA Systems, n.d.)

Protecting SCADA
Throughout the time of popularity in the cybersecurity world, SCADA has been a topic of discussion because of the critical role it plays in water treatment plants, oil pipelines, traffic engineering systems, and many more key pieces of technology that keeps the country moving on a day-to-day basis. The first documented attack on a SCADA system was in 1982 on the Serbian oil pipeline explosion when an attacker targeted the SCADA system overriding pressure warnings and editing the system to allow for such high operating pressure. (Alanazi et al., 2022). The industry standard for the best protection of the SCADA systems is an industry specific VPN designated solely for the SCADA systems to ensure proper encryption. (SCADA Systems, n.d.).

Conclusion
As evident in the above, SCADA systems play a crucial role in the world we live in today. This means we need to have a clear understanding of the task they perform and the means of protecting them because failure to protect them can lead to disastrous results as seen in 1982. Whether you are the technician working on the machinery using the SCADA or the cybersecurity professional everyone plays a role in keeping the infrastructure working and protecting the valuable information on the system.

References
Alanazi, M., Mahmood, A., & Jabed Morshed Chowdhury, M. (2022, December 2). SCADA vulnerabilities and attacks: A review of the state‐of‐the‐art and open issues. ScienceDirect. Retrieved November 010, 2025, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404822004205
SCADA Systems. (n.d.). SCADA. Scada Systems. http://www.scadasystems.net