Critical infrastructure systems are the foundation of everything modern society runs on: power, water, communications, transit, agriculture, finance, and healthcare. As we continue to move towards implementing internet connectivity in all aspects of our lives, including critical infrastructure, we gain ease of access, better incident reporting and response times when problems arise, and more, but we also increase the vulnerability of these systems. Critical infrastructure has become ideal targets for cyber attacks due to the amount of damage that can be done with little risk to the orchestrating parties.
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are a type of industrial control system (ICS) aimed to centralize automated control over large or complex systems and report data to the control hub (“SCADA Systems”). SCADA systems consolidate the data from all machines and processes used by a system and report the data back to the control hub, making monitoring all parts of a system more efficient and user friendly.

While SCADA systems are physically secure, there are digital security concerns when it comes to the authorization of system use and a lack of protection for packet control protocols (“SCADA Systems”). According to the assigned article, “SCADA Systems”, vendors are working to mitigate these vulnerabilities by developing specialized VPNs and firewalls as well as implementing whitelisting to limit unauthorized access. Furthermore, IEEE Public Safety Technology advises the use of third-party audits and certification to ensure cybersecurity regulatory standards are being met as well as the use of software defined perimeters and authentication to secure SCADA remote access instead of VPNs.

References
“Cybersecurity of Critical Infrastructure with ICS/SCADA Systems – IEEE Public Safety Technology.” Ieee.org, 2021, publicsafety.ieee.org/topics/cybersecurity-of-critical-infrastructure-with-ics-scada-systems/.
“SCADA Systems.” Perusall, app.perusall.com/courses/202520_cyse200t_25254-cybersecurity-technol-society/scada-systems?assignmentId=sWybaJW997P3NokDp&part=1&panel=assignmentInformation&filter=all.