Hacking SCADA for terrorism and destruction

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SCADA vulnerability

As an Engineer who has spent the past 20 years working on SCADA systems for water and wastewater plants, I have some comments on this article. (And yes we are a user of CitectSCADA) First, where I work, we NEVER connect our plant control systems (SCADA systems) to ANY other network. Not Internet, Intranet, wireless, or anything. They are set up as standalone systems. The risk is just too great, and the benefits are marginal. As mentioned in the article, there is an army of hackers out there always looking for a vulnerable system - the best way to protect the system is not to present it to them. I know of other industries (power generation) that have similar bans on connection to outside networks. We also never allow any contractor to access our SCADA network, for any reason.
This 'stand alone' approach does take dicipline and support - there are always people in the company that want to integrate the 'process' SCADA side with the 'business' side, either through the company's Intranet or the Internet. It takes strong convictions by the IT staff, plant operation staff and Engineers in charge of the plant to resist these efforts. It's sometimes not easy, but we sleep very well at nights knowing that some hacker on the other side of the planet cannot get into our system.

Posted by: brewakeg   Posted on: 06/12/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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