Threat Watch

Why SCADA Security Must Be Addressed

The threat to SCADA systems is largely hypothetical today, but experts see real incidents around the corner

By Rick Cook

However, some of the control system vendors are taking security seriously. After the well-publicized discovery of a security flaw in its SuiteLink product, Wonderware began an extensive campaign to upgrade the security of its products.

Further, a lot of the doomsday scenarios are overblown. Andrew Ongun, general manager of Evolutionary Commercial Systems, a Huntington Beach, Calif., consultancy specializing in control systems, points out that, for example, a lot of the equipment has built-in sanity checks that won't allow parameters to reach dangerous levels, no matter how badly the system is hacked.

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