Zachary Hrinda
3/20/2022
SCADA Systems
In the world of critical infrastructure, there are systems and processes that are needed to operate all the complex machinery that go into the means of production. SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition) is used to monitor and control vast amounts of data for facilities such as a water treatment plants, with how it can control the flow and pressure of water, or at an airport where it keeps track of all the planes in the air and passengers assigned to each aircraft.
With the world’s dependance on critical infrastructure, it is important that security personal pour their resources into making a safe environment for their infrastructure to reside in. One area that will always be a threat, no matter how much time and resources are pulled to prevent it, is the human element. HMI (Human Machine Interface) is used to display data from the computers and machines connected to SCADA in a way that is readable for the person to manage and control the process of that machine’s task. That is where a vulnerability can reside, an article titled One Flaw too Many: Vulnerabilities in SCAFA Systems from TrendMicro.com has this to say about the HMI vulnerabilities, “because of its capabilities and role in SCADA systems, HMIs can be an ideal target for potential threat actors aiming to gain control over processes or steal critical information.” Simply put, if someone is able to gain control of that HMI, the consequences could be disastrous with the data that individual can see.
One of the more popular and albeit more prominent threat, is a network attack. This could be a virus, or someone finding their way into the SCADA system through a network vulnerability. While much has been done in the way to prevent that from happening. If a device is connected to a network, there are going to be vulnerabilities that need to be addressed and not ignored. An article by SCADAsystems.net explores SCADA in good detail, they also talk about vulnerabilities and how some people have the wrong mindset when it comes to network security. The article has this to say about such, “SCADA users infer that VPN is sufficient protection, and remain oblivious to the fact that physical access to network switches and jacks related to SCADA provides the capacity to bypass the security on control software and control SCADA networks.”
Thankfully most of these attacks can be prevented if the proper policies are followed. NIST’s guide on security can go hand in hand with SCADA systems. TrendMicro.com also quotes from the NIST guide in the same article as before, and they summarize what they see as some of the important policies that a SCADA system can use. It is as follows, “prevent the use of unknown and untrusted USB devices, maintain strict policies for devices that are allowed to connect to SCADA network, and apply network segmentation.” They are definitely more policies a SCADA system should and need to follow than this, but these are just some of the more basic steps that must be done to start securing your system.
References.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DvxnWUSLe27H5u8A6yyIS9Qz7BVt_8p2WeNHctGVboY/edit#
One flaw too many: Vulnerabilities in SCADA systems. Security News. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2022, from https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/vulnerabilities-and-exploits/one-flaw-too-many-vulnerabilities-in-scada-systems