SCADA communication and security issues

Abstract

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are widely used to monitor and control industrial processes. They provide the key functionality of real-time monitoring, logging/archiving, report generation, and automation for smart grid, which is a promising power delivery system for the near future. On the basis of these functionalities, various SCADA architectures, including hardware and software architecture, have been proposed and standardized; however, the most open and expediently growing areas in the smart grid are the infrastructure and technologies for the SCADA communication and security. In this paper, we provide a review for many documented standards in SCADA, and we also review its state-of-the-art communication and security aspects.

New Security Development and Trends to Secure the SCADA Sensors Automated Transmission during Critical Sessions

“…These protocols provide interconnectivity with DNP3 over the Internet. Therefore, this protocol is also defined as an open or non-proprietary protocol in SCADA systems [1][2][3][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…The existing work [6,7,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] of SCADA security has employed the end-to-end developments to secure the communication of SCADA systems. A number of limitations and dependencies are found during end-to-end developments [8,19,27].…”

“…In the SCADA system, DNP3 performs several operations followed by functions (codes), such as transfer functions, control functions, freeze functions and time synchronization functions, and file transferring functions [5]. Now-a-days, DNP3 is employed to interconnect field devices or remote sensors, located in various geographical locations and controlled from central controller(s) [6][7][8]. With the acquisition of modern technologies and connectivity over the Internet, SCADA/DNP3 communication has been vulnerable to cyber security threats which can be tremendously harmful to industrial systems [7][8][9].…”

“…Each node in the SCADA network should send/receive the bytes at a specified time interval. Therefore, a specified time is crucial for each node during SCADA transmission [6,10]. Several security designs for that type of transmission are inappropriate due to time limitations [6,[10][11][12].…”

“…Several security mechanisms, including security pattern approaches, TLS/SSL, Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), Secure Shell (SSH), hardware/software firewalls, demilitarized zones (DMZs), authentication protocols, and cryptography solutions, have been designed and deployed to protect industrial communication against vulnerabilities and potential attacks [6,7,[13][14][15]. Among these security approaches, cryptography based mechanisms are suggested as the best security approaches, due to their independence and implementation evaluation [8,[16][17][18][19].…”