Scada installations in factories

Design basic scada system

Scada gsm

All the SCADA systems irrespective of field where they implied rely on same principle. These systems are employed for remote management of critical processes.

These systems have central room/system to manage all these processes with the help of computers and communication networks. The remote sensors collect the data at specific interval of time which is predefined and then sends this data to central system which processes the data collected.

Thus, main components of SCADA system can be zeroed into three components: Hardware (for input and output), PLCs (Programmable Logic Converters, which determines the responses SCADA system issues when some error is detected) and Transmission media (through which data collected is sent to central system through remote terminals). Though various modes of media are used like Ethernet, internet or wireless but radio transmission has always been cost effective solutions.

Generally SCADA design engineers never show any concern about the security as well as authentication in the design of SCADA system, its deployment along with currently working SCADA networks.

Thus, many leakages prevail and hackers can take advantage of these loop holes which can lead to leakage of crucial data or huge financial losses. SCADA systems are also employed in nuclear electricity generation and leakage of such data can be a costly affair if it gets into wrong hands. This gives another reason for researchers to call for security enhancement for SCADA communication protocols.

There is no doubt about the fact that SCADA networks are physically secure. Thus, SCADA design engineers never pay any heed to make the transmission secure.

All SCADA systems work on one principle. Remote sensors collect data and central system processes them. The central system stores data which can be analysed at a later stage and is known as SCADA Historian data analysis.

The analysed data is presented in human readable format at Man Machine Interface, often abbreviated as MMI. These tasks are performed with special software. The record which gets collected on hourly basis (or any predefined period) is scrutinized as well as SCADA Historian data analysis is undertaken with the purpose of process optimization. For SCADA Historian data analysis to be carried out the main requisite is existence of database as it is acts as repository for processing of data.

The applications for SCADA Historian data analysis are generally written in either VB or Microsoft C and the data is entered into database either manually or through the remote sensors. Generally, the software creates time sampled records which can be easily scrutinized with the purpose of process optimization. The reports generated are either event based (report is generated on occurrences of particular event) or time based (report is generated every hour).