{"id":295,"date":"2024-04-15T23:38:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-15T23:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/?p=295"},"modified":"2024-04-15T23:38:42","modified_gmt":"2024-04-15T23:38:42","slug":"role-of-scada-systems-in-critical-infrastructure-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/2024\/04\/15\/role-of-scada-systems-in-critical-infrastructure-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Role of SCADA systems in critical infrastructure systems"},"content":{"rendered":"Infrastructure systems are the backbone of communities. Critical infrastructure are those<br \/>infrastructure systems and assets that are so vital that their incapacitation or destruction would<br \/>have a debilitating effect on security, the economy, public health, public safety, or any<br \/>combination thereof. Critical infrastructure systems are made of individual assets that work<br \/>together as an integrated system and some of the most critical infrastructure systems are energy,<br \/>communications, water, and transportation (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,<br \/>n.d.). These four systems are important to us as individuals and as a society, the economy would<br \/>be in shambles without these because the function of other systems are dependent on them.<br \/>Communication affects cell towers, telephone lines, broadcasting, etc. Energy is affiliated with<br \/>power plants, transformers, fuel terminals, and more. Transportation has to do with roadways,<br \/>railways, ports, airports, pipelines and the water system comprises storage tanks, water<br \/>treatment, wastewater treatment. Without water alone our lives are at risk. Threats to critical<br \/>infrastructures can be classified into 3 categories, natural threats, human-caused, and accidental<br \/>or technical. Natural threats are natural disasters like tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, volcanic<br \/>eruptions. The transportation and communication sectors are at greater risk in this category.<br \/>Human-caused threats a.k.a terrorism includes cyber attacks, rioting, product tampering,<br \/>explosions and bombing. Accidental and technological threats include such issues as<br \/>transportation accidents and failures, infrastructure failures and hazardous material accidents.<br \/>Most critical infrastructure systems are in close proximity with one another and are often<br \/>controlled by a general system, this increases vulnerability to the above threats (Robles et al.,<br \/>n.d., pg17-19).<br \/>Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) refers to industrial control systems used to<br \/>control infrastructure systems both critical and non-critical. It is a general system that oversees<br \/>3<br \/>the infrastructure systems by monitoring and controlling remote equipment and resources<br \/>SCADA systems provide greater efficiency, in terms of faster and more coordinated system<br \/>control than human operation, as well as lower operational costs and better use of scarce human<br \/>and financial resources. I wouldn\u2019t say it mitigates the vulnerabilities of the infrastructure<br \/>systems, it makes them more advanced in a way and allows for free flow of operation. That<br \/>responsibility has made it a target of cyberattacks because the devices were not made with<br \/>cybersecurity in mind and with critical systems like transportation and water under its control, it<br \/>may do more harm than good.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s why SCADA systems are important<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28656,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28656"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/nemeka70\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}