Security issues in SCADA based industrial control systems

Abstract

Ongoing research and developments in modern information and communication technologies have revolutionized the design of industrial control systems (ICS). There is a major domain transition from traditional electromechanical systems to network based digital systems, which has indeed created a powerful interface between state-of the-art computing technologies/paradigms and physical processes sought to be controlled. ICS play a critical role in the industrial and manufacturing sector. Major infrastructures like petrochemical industries, waste water treatment facilities, nuclear power plants, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage industries etc. cannot run properly without ICS. Real-time processing, reliability and advanced distributed intelligence are some of the core characteristics of ICS which are incorporated with the help of state-of-the-art internet communication and computing technologies. The complex embedded coupling of hardware and software components such as actuators, sensors and the physical processes are all monitored and manipulated by the communication and network protocol based controllers like supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, programmable logic controllers (PLC), distributed control systems (DCS) etc. The integration of these technologies makes the access to ICS from the external world much easier. On the other hand, this has led to many critical cyber-security issues also. These issues are of such a nature that they may sometimes pose a serious threat to the safety of humans and the environment as well. Unless managed properly, these can have adverse implications for the national economy also, in terms of production losses. In this paper, we attempt to give a comprehensive review of the unique aspects of cyber-security issues in ICS. Specifically, we delve upon the issues of security assessment and architectural reviewing of ICS. We also give a brief survey on different threat attacks on ICS.