Utilities—water, gas, oil, electricity, and communications—are critical infrastructures that rely heavily on industrial networks and automated control systems. The disruption of any of these systems, could impact our society and our safety. Of the common utilities, electricity is often separated as requiring more extensive security. Oil and gas refining and distribution are systems that should be treated as both chemical/hazardous material as well as a critical component of our infrastructures.
There are various internal threats and external threats to SCADA systems from various categories. In the first category, there is a threat posed by a company’s own employees. Company insiders have access to internal controls and data, and either by accident or malicious intent can cause equipment outages. In the second category, there are organized groups with a specific goal like terrorists. A third category of threat is the threat posed by casual hackers. When considering the closed characteristics of SCADA systems in electric power industry compared to others, 1st and 2nd category threats are comparatively probable threats. It is very important and necessary to define and classify the concrete threats and vulnerabilities for building security countermeasures for protecting the SCADA system.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Zia Saquib did his Bachelors from REC Rourkela, Masters from Florida Institute of Technology, USA and Ph.D. from NIT Surat. He woked at HAL Bengaluru, Florida Institute of Technology, Vanstar Corporation, Ocwen Financial and Infotec of Florida before joining C-DAC, where he also heads the Computer Networks and Internet Engineering Research group. He is the Chief Investigator of the project 'Cyber-security of SCADA Systems' and is the Architect of e-Pramaan Authentication System for the National e- Governance Plan of Govt. of India. Dr Saquib is a Fellow of Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK) and is Senior Member of IEEE.
