Name: Monica Oliva
Date: Nov 4, 2022
SCADA Systems
BLUF
This article was about SCADA Systems. It gave information on many things such as components that are involved along with hardware and software and even some basic background information. Overall, I think that SCADA Systems are a huge part in Cybersecurity and are useful for big companies and even regular use.
SCADA Systems: What it is
SCADA stands for ‘Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition’. SCADA systems are often used to help with the following industrial control systems: control infrastructure processes, facility based processes, and industrial processes. SCADA systems have multiple subsystems which include the apparatus, Remote Terminal Units (RTUs), and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs).
Essentially, SCADA systems are used to control interfaces for many different projects.
Components and hardware of SCADA Systems
SCADA systems have multiple components. Two of the most common components are Remote Terminal Units and Programmable Logic Controllers. These are considered collection points that collect data from a computer that are referred to “gateways” according to the onlogic blog article titled “What is a SCADA system and How does it work?”. Gateways act to pass on the the data from the PLCs to the corresponding servers.
The RTUs are physically connected to the equipment. The RTUs convert the electrical signals into digital values which can control the equipment by stating the statuses of opened and closed.
The software/servers that make these ‘gateways’ possible are called ‘Supervisory Stations’. After the PCLs/RTUs the data gets transferred over to the HMI workstations (Human Machine Interface – apparatus that gives the information to a human operator). All of this is in the Master station which can contain one or multiple serves and diaster recovery sites.
Security Issues
While SCADA Sytems can be very helpful and useful, it can bring in a lot of issues and concerns to worry about. According to the given article on SCADA Systems, there are two major threats: unauthorized access to software and threats that would impact the network segments hosted by SCADA Systems. There are multiple fixes in the works for these such as VPNs.
Conclusion on SCADA Systems
This article (http://www.scadasystems.net) was very informative on SCADA Systems. It was very clear and has made me come to the conclusion that these systems are very important for various reasons and more importantly it showed that all the separate working parts to the SCADA Systems are all vital.
References
Wangsness, C. (2021, December 1). What is a SCADA system and how does it work? OnLogic Blog. Retrieved November 4, 2022, from https://www.onlogic.com/company/io-hub/what-is-a-scada-system-and-how-does-it-work/
SCADA systems. SCADA Systems. (n.d.). Retrieved November 6, 2022, from http://www.scadasystems.net/