The vulnerabilities associated with critical infrastructure systems are characterized as a breach or malfunction in any systems, installations, or assets in any facility-based, or industrial-based processes. This could cause any infrastructure to be incapacitated or lose its ability to perform its required function as a result of being damaged by either a natural disaster, human-caused damage, or accidental/technical issue. What the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition, SCADA, does is it controls and monitors large areas to make sure that any systems, facility based processes, and industrial processes are not being broken into, or malfunctioning Think of it as a home alarm system. Let’s say the batteries in the motion sensor of a window are running low. The alarm system will recognize that and inform the user that there is an issue that needs to be fixed.
The role SCADA applications play in mitigating these risks is by having subsystems within itself to allow for better monitoring and control to male sure an infrastructure is functioning correctly. The first one is called the apparatus. This subsystem is controlled by an operator/ human. The operators job is to see all the processed data that is given to them by the apparatus. An example would be a security guard watching the cameras. The cameras are the apparatus and the security guard is the operator . The second subsystem is called a supervisory system. This system gathers all the required and necessary data about a process to display on the apparatus. The third subsystem is the Remote Terminal Units or RTU’s. These are connected to the sensors of the process, which helps to convert the signals to digital data and sends it to a supervisory system to then display on an apparatus to the operator. The last subsystem is the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). PLCs are used as on- field devices to enable communication between onsite infrastructure and the main control room that stores the data.
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