SCADA Systems
Jayden Maddox
From 10/29/21
SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is an industrial control system. It can be used to control infrastructure processes such as water treatment, wastewater treatment, gas pipelines and wind farms. SCADA can also be used to control facility-based processes such as airports, space stations and ships. For last SCADA can be used to control industrial processes such as manufacturing, production, refining and power generation.
There are a couple of vulnerabilities with critical infrastructure systems. One being unauthorized access to software whether it be human, intentionally induced changes, a virus infection or any other problems that can affect the control host machine. The second vulnerability associated with critical infrastructure systems is packet access to network segments that host any SCADA device. In most scenarios, there is little to no security on packet control protocol. This means any person sending packets to a SCADA device is in position to take full control of it.
There are a variety of different roles SCADA applications play to mitigate these threats. The SCADA protocols have been designed to send information to the master station but only when the RTU is polled by the master station. For better communication between different hardware and software a widely accepted solution that allows communication between the devices is the PLE for process control.
Different generations of the SCADA systems were also implemented. The first generation being monolithic. Communication was needed so RTU vendors designed wide area networks that help in communication with RTU so if the mainframe system failed there would be a back-up mainframe. The second generation being about distribution. In comparison to the first generation the cost and size of station were reduced and the protocols for the networks caused security issues for the SCADA systems. Very few people knew how secure the SCADA installation was due to the nature of the protocols. The third generation revolves around network. Since the communication between the SCADA systema and the master station is done through the internet, the vulnerability is increased, but the usage of security techniques and protocols means that SCADA systems can have more security improvements applied to them.\
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