Title:
SCADA Systems
Name:
Hector Gomez
Date:
October 31st, 2021
Details:
SCADA stands for Supervisory control and data acquisition and it is a system of software and hardware elements that help out industrial organizations. According to Inductive Automation “SCADA systems are crucial for industrial organizations since they help to maintain efficiency, process data for smarter decisions, and communicate system issues to help mitigate downtime.” Even though people believe that SCADA systems are very safe, it should be known that they are actually not as safe as we think. There are two major threats as we speak and they are unauthorized access to the systems and packet access to network segments. For the unauthorized access, it could be human access, viruses, etc. that can affect the SCADA system leaving everything vulnerable. As for Packet access, it just means that if packets are sent to SCADA systems then whoever sent them has the ability to control the systems. Some other vulnerabilities to critical infrastructures are DDoS attacks, Malware attacks, and Web Application attacks. According to SCADA Systems, “SCADA vendors are addressing these risks by developing specialized industrial VPN and firewall solutions for SCADA networks that are based on TCP/IP. Also, whitelisting solutions have been implemented due to their ability to prevent unauthorized application changes.” If and when these risks are solved, SCADA systems will be as safe as we believe them to be. According to DerekSchaap SCADA plays a role in mitigating these risks when “the human factors can receive the data from these systems and implement change.” This means that when the system has a failure or an incident occurs, humans who specialize in these systems fix it and make it to where it doesn’t happen again. As more problems occur within the systems, it means that the system will implement changes to keep mitigating those risks. That way the SCADA systems will continue to work and improve.
References:
What is SCADA? Inductive Automation. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://inductiveautomation.com/resources/article/what-is-scada.
Iaremenko, A. (2021, October 31). 5 threats to Critical Infrastructure Security. HUB Security. Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://hubsecurity.io/5-threats-to-critical-infrastructure-security/.
SCADA systems. SCADA Systems. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2021, from http://www.scadasystems.net/.dscha005, P. by. (2020, December 2). Derekschaap. Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://sites.wp.odu.edu/derekschaap/2020/12/02/the-vulnerabilities-with-critical-infrastructure-and-the-role-scada-plays-to-mitigate-risk/.