In the digital age, there’s no doubt that British firms and institutions are under threat from increasingly sophisticated cyber thieves. This is borne out by the numbers, with the most recent statistics showing that 43% of British firms and 19% of charitable organisations have suffered a cyber breach during the last 12 months.
The cyber threat is also extending to so-called smart cities, including prominent examples like London and Bristol. These cities leverage connected devices are part of an integrated network, while collating huge swathes or personal and company data that could be of interest to thieves.
In this post, we’ll address this further while asking how a SCADA system can be used to protect against a potential cyber-attack.
What is a SCADA System?
The acronym SCADA stands for supervisory control and data acquisition, and its essentially refers to industrial control systems that leverage technology to manage valves, motors and a host of manufacturing processes.
It’s fair to say that SCADA systems have evolved considerably through the ages, however, with many businesses and energy plants still reliant on technology that pre-dates the Internet. This technology is extremely inefficient and unfit for purpose in the digital age, while it also lends itself to systems that are vulnerable to attack from sophisticated cyber thieves and hackers.
Fortunately, today’s businesses, energy plants and smart cities can now install smart SCADA systems, which leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) to connect control devices across a secure wireless network.
What are the Benefits of a Modern-day SCADA System?
To understand the benefits of a contemporary SCAD system, we need to look at the solutions that exist in the marketplace.
One of the market leading options is SCOPE, which is described as an enterprise SCADA and telemetry solution for controlling a diverse range of assets in real-time.
The key here is the fact that this solution enables devices to collate and communicate data remotely in real-time, which in turn makes it possible for site managers to identify threats and cyber-attacks as they occur. As a result, they could tackle this before the attack has a seismic impact on the business, even in instances where largely automated or remote locations are targeted by hackers.
Oil refiners and paper companies are among the numerous entities embracing this type of modern SCADA system, in order to better protect their manufacturing infrastructure from malware and even state-sponsored attacks.
Power and energy suppliers are particularly keen to leverage solutions like Scope, following recent warnings from the UK security services that Russia is targeting western energy companies with sustained cyber-attacks.
In this respect, smart SCADA systems offer a crucial solution to the threat of cyber-attacks across a range of industries, as they help industrial plants to optimise their efficiency while also creating a unified defence across all sites.