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by Alan Alper, MA Editorial Staff Posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 1:02:00 PM   | Abstract: | While open networking standards and Windows-based PCs have made plant floor systems more intuitive and interoperable, they've also increased the manufacturing enterprise's vulnerability to a host of cyber threats. Here's a checklist of issues to consider when evaluating the safety of your SCADA systems. |
Manufacturers' belated embrace of Web-driven applications accessed via Windows-based systems on the factory floor is a good news/bad news scenario relative to mission-critical supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA systems. The goods news: Open networks can be more easily and inexpensively deployed to enable more intuitive data sharing and communications across the enterprise (and remotely) by Web browsers that sit on Windows-based PCs that use the Internet's communications protocol (TCP/IP), as well as HTML and HTTP -- the Web's page description language and transport protocol. The bad news: While facilitating cross-functional communication and information sharing, the approach opens Pandora's box when it comes to securing SCADA, systems which are used to gather and analyze real-time plant operations data throughout the process manufacturing sector and the electrical and water utilities industries. [Click to continue] |