SCADA refers to ICS (industrial control systems) used to control infrastructure processes (water
treatment, wastewater treatment, gas pipelines, wind farms, etc), facility-based processes (airports, space stations, ships, etc,) or industrial processes (production, manufacturing, refining, power generation, etc) (Staff e edit).SCADA was introduced in the 1970’s, in which the internet wasn’t a common thing in the modern world. People didn’t ever think technology would get as advanced as it is today.

Once the internet was being built, more of our crucial framework of computers were being set up. SCADA is a very old system which holds a lot of information and anyone in the world can log into a SCADA computer. The internet holds a kind of connection to other humans that we were craving so we dug deeper into the internet to make everything more accessible to everyone around the world. The internet soon began to run
itself and find ways to connect everything to anyone. SCADA is crucial to any facility based process and is important to control these infrastructure processes. For example, anyone can hack into a system and turn off a viable source of anything in order to mess with a country or target the heart of a country, the people. There’s been multiple examples of these types of hacking, like in 2015, it was the first known cyber attack that was successful in cutting a power grid across thousands of Ukrainians, called the Ukraine Power Grid. It left thousands without electricity
for up to 6 hours. This can happen anywhere in the world at any time if someone wants to hack our
systems and they know how to do it, they could access very confidential, important things that can affect millions of people.

The SCADA system isn’t a very fast or easy system either, many devices currently, are way faster than SCADA. There’s many viruses that can be created to block workers from detecting a threat or even from stopping a hacking threat which makes it very hard to prevent a cyber attack. The main premise of SCADA is to protect and monitor our very crucial information and infrastructure processes that are most important to us in our everyday lives. Although, the security of SCADA is not as good as it seems, because it is an easy target for cyber terrorism or attacks.

References:

Staff, Editorial, et al. “What Is SCADA ? How Does SCADA Works ?: Applications of SCADA.”
Inst Tools, 4 Mar. 2021, https://instrumentationtools.com/overview-of-scada-system/.
“14 Major SCADA Attacks and What You Can Learn from Them.” 14 Major SCADA Hacks,
https://www.dpstele.com/blog/major-scada-hacks.php.