So what’s Scada all about? It stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition and it plays a vital role in our everyday lives. It’s these computer systems which control huge industrial systems such as water treatment plants, power plants and transportation.  In fact almost every critical system that we are dependent on – it’s all quiet behind the scenes stuff that we don’t realise exists and take for granted, but when this breaks down perhaps due to a breach in the security setups….. we will certainly know about it!

So you want to know more and read up about it? Take a look at what the IET Library has to offer. 

What is there that you can look at anytime, anywhere?….. Try our electronic resource The Virtual Library.  For example Knovel’s electronic book:

Cybersecurity for SCADA Systems  by William T Shaw published by PennWell published in 2006.  This provides a detailed overview and readers will understand the vital issues, and learn strategies for decreasing or eliminating system vulnerabilities.

And another resource within the Virtual Library is The Engineering and IT Reference Library  which has over 440 electronic books.  Such as Ronald L Krutz’s Securing SCADA Systems published by John Wiley & Sons in 2006 and looks at how security can be applied to ensure the safety of the nation’s infrastructure.          

EbscoHost databases have some great articles on the topic:

A log mining approach for process monitoring in SCADA (2012)

Secure SCADA framework for the protection of energy control systems (2011)

Developing a Multi-Layer Strategy for Securing Control Systems of

Oil Refineries (2012)

iDSRT: Integrated Dynamic Soft Real-time Architecture for Critical

Infrastructure Data Delivery over WLAN (2011)

And finally what books has the IET library got for you to borrow on this topic?

Alarm management: a comprehensive guide by B.R. Hollfield of Research Triangle Park, NC: International Society of Automation (2011)

Cybersecurity for industrial control systems: SCADA, DCS, PLC, HMI and SIS by T. Macaulay (2012)

Industrial network security: Securing Critical Infrastructure Networks for Smart Grid, SCADA, and Other Industrial Control Systems by E.D Knapp (2011)

You may also want to consider this conference on SCADA – taking place in February 2012:  http://conferences.theiet.org/cyber-ics/about/index.cfm

Enjoy learning about SCADA.