The U.S. currently faces a growing threat from cyber-attacks against its critical infrastructure (CI) vital to our modern society. Many understand this growing threat but don’t know the origins of a key attack vector. In a recent report on securing industrial control systems (ICS) it was said that “much of the Nation’s CI depends on ICS such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and distributed control systems (DCS), which rely on programmable logic controllers (PLC) to manage essential and complex operational processes.”[i]

SCADA systems are used to operate large-scale systems around the world, to include the U.S.[ii] The widespread adoption of SCADA grew because of the need to more economically manage large-scale industrial systems to support modern society’s growing demand for products, services, and utilities. The sheer size, complexity, and sensitivity of these large-scale industrial systems requires continuous monitoring, communication, and coordination at remote locations to provide needed utility services.[iii]

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