The pressure to do more at a lower cost never does go away for any business. The question is whether managers understand the investments required to make this happen.
You can't squeeze blood from a stone, we all know that much. However, there is another way and it is quite evil. A perpetrator can trash the infrastructure while things keep moving ahead with deferred maintenance. However, by the time anyone discovers the missing maintenance, the perpetrators will have been through several promotions for their "good performance." They'll be in a fine position to fix the problems they made.
This is how __it happens in a utility. I wish it were legal to prosecute people for this kind of idiotic negligence. Instead, we give them lots of money so they can buy memberships in the premier country clubs, hobnob with other executives, and perpetrate this foolishness all over again while trying make excuses for why everything is falling apart all around them.
...the only way you'll get it is to move up in the electromagnetic spectrum. It had to be a laser based communications system.
The alternative is to smear this crap all over the electromagnetic spectrum. And at this data rate, if you really expect throughput, you can't rely on spread spectrum to save you.
You missed one key point: We haven't built many new runways or airports in the last 20 years. Add to that problem the numerous reliever GA airports closing every year and you can see that the large airports are getting swamped with traffic they were never designed to handle.
Most of the congestion in our modern airspace system is on the runway! Modern navigation systems have significantly improved air safety and situational awareness. The chance of a mid-air collision away from the runway environment is next to nothing compared to the chance of collision on runways, and on the final approach path.
And in case you're wondering, the modern super-jumbo aircraft, the A380, doesn't really help this situation much. The problem there is wake turbulence. They leave behind a wake in the air that is dangerous to most other aircraft. They're required to leave at least a five mile trail of free airspace behind them. So while they can take more passengers, they still need to keep the runway clear for a length of time that basically nullifies any gains in passenger movement.
I own a Uniden BC-996 scanner. I monitor fire fighters and police activities in my area across several trunking systems. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's scary. And sometimes it's sad.
The entertainment value is there. Even my very non-geeky wife turns it on to listen.
However, many people can't take these scanners with them in their cars. Many state laws prevent them from doing that UNLESS they have permission from the state police to monitor from a car, or you happen to have a federally significant reason, such as possession of a ham radio license.
Rodney King's beating wasn't just a matter of a video tape. There were people who monitored the MDT traffic between the various cops involved. Oh, and by the way, MDT monitoring is illegal now, even from your home.
If you want to offend a cop, drive around with a scanner in your car, configured for the trunking system the local cops are using. They do not like it when people demonstrate their ability to monitor them.
...if I understand something called "ground effect" correctly.
It's a good thing you hedged your statement because I have doubts that you understand ground effect.
Ground effect is caused by the disruption of airflow from wing-tip vortices. For airplanes, the disruption of this source of drag from the wing tips results in extra lift as the airplane approaches the ground to land.
For Helicopters and Gyro-copters the proximity of the main rotor to ground also disrupts the air curling over the edge of the rotors. They too get a slight boost of lift.
However, this Jet-Pack uses a ducted fan. The fans duct contains the wing tip (fan blade) vortices, so there is no ground effect. And don't get me started about the exhausted air --that doesn't result in any extra thrust for a rocket, nor would it result in any extra thrust for a ducted fan.
...or it could be an arrogant smarty pants has just singlehandedly built a WAN and doesn't want his bosses to "f___ it up." They've already sent most of the competent, experienced staff packing. He may well have been one of the few well qualified, experienced people left.
His bosses, dense as they probably are, must have finally had a close encounter with a clue stick massive enough to get their attention. They in turn demand a password so that they can hand the keys over to some dweeb who at the very least is probably inexperienced, if not a completely incompetent turd.
Childs says no. Bosses make official demand. Childs tells them to go get it for themselves --if they can. Out come the handcuffs and lawyers, and we get to read about this BS in the news.
I think bosses are compensating for allowing nonsense like this to go this far in the first place. Childs probably figures that as long as he's going down in flames, he might as well take few idiots with him.
I think there may be more than enough blame to go around.
I can't continue to discuss this with you because you keep moving the topic of discussion.
You keep returning to that term "responsible" and I don't thin we agree on what it means.
Except for a few pathologically evil people, the vast majority of the population seeks a better world in some way. What you're harping on is the fact that someone may not be ecologically responsible, to the exclusion of any other possibility. And you know what? If that were the only issue in the world, I'd agree that you have a point. But responsibility also refers to safety, fiduciary, social, and other aspects as well. These parameters intersect and often work against each other.
You are trying to make the long term case that environmental responsibility is ALWAYS best. I'm saying that if you don't take care of short term issues as well, you won't have to worry about the longer term because you won't be around long enough to care.
I propose that when your child gets sick, that you do nothing. I propose that we not build hospitals, roads, power plants, ambulances, plastics factories, refineries, pharmaceutical plants, etcetera. I propose that we all just do nothing.
We are a part of this world, whether you realize it or not. We are already trying stuff inadvertently. Pointing at failures doesn't mean that we shouldn't try something to clean up problems. Why not try to clean it up? If you don't make a few mistakes, it means you're not trying hard enough.
If we listen to you, people will die off, but, hey, that's ok because it restores "Gaia's balance."
Keep smoking whatever it is that you've got there, buddy. It's real good stuff.
It's easy to say things like what you say with 20/20 hindsight. The missing piece of your argument are the pollution standards. I'm not suggesting for a minute that we pollute excessively. However, we can't expect companies to go well beyond the extra effort required to reduce pollution or power consumption by another order of magnitude.
This is why we negotiate environmental agreements. If we set the bar too high, then nobody will be able to afford to produce anything. We'll have a pristine environment that nobody can afford to live in. Too many other countries will have lower standards, and they'll produce the products, not you. If we set the bar too low, then we'll be swimming in our own filth. If the choice is really business or outsourcing the manufacturing, guess what happens?
I'm not beating up on China. What they're doing is not sustainable. I believe even they know that. What I am showing is that we live in a world where you have to make compromises. Company B's fault in your example, is that they couldn't sell product at a reasonable price because they were spending too much on the process. And if the local regulators had pushed the pollution requirements to Company B's level, who could say if both companies would have managed to survive? Remember, we live in a global economy...
You're right, we should attempt to figure out how we can mix this effectively in the ocean. However, at some point, we have to stop studying it, and try it on a small scale to see what effects it has. If the effects are pretty much as predicted, then we should carefully scale up.
I'm not suggesting for a minute that people should embrace full production tomorrow. But we have penalties for sitting on our hands as much as we have penalties for trying something. We need to weigh the potential benefits against the potential for something to go wrong.
This is why we have politics. These things simply aren't knowable in a quantitative sense. At some point we have to appeal to the public at large for choosing which risk they feel most comfortable with.
Contrary to popular notions of economics, where "people believe that cheaper is always better, and anyone spending money on anything is always good", waste is actually bad for the economy.
This is an interesting notion, but I feel you've missed something. I would have said "Excessive waste is bad for the economy." And therein lies the problem.
Clearly, we have reached a price where we have to move these waste/efficiency set-points for most energy hungry applications. But it doesn't do a company any good to continue efficiency for efficiency's sake. Companies have failed because of over-engineering too.
In a way, Al Gore was right. It really IS about the carbon emissions. The problem is that his lifestyle pushes significantly more Carbon Dioxide in to the environment while using current market technologies.
I don't see the efforts for producing better SUVs as necessarily appeasement. Yes, efficient compact cars have been on the market for some time. What we do not have are efficient vehicles that can handle a family and all the stuff that tends to go with them. We need a bit of realism here. This isn't about the style of car. It's about the efficiency of the drive train and the power source we use to move it.
I think people are try to be responsible. The problem is that no two people seem to agree on what "responsible" is. The way I see it, "responsible" development means to do whatever some pompous personality says is good for us. That doesn't have a good track record either. At best, it only slows development, but it doesn't stop it.
This solution may actually reverse the effects. I'll concede that in many if not most cases where people tinker with the environment there are unintended consequences. But the alternative such as "responsible" practices aren't producing better results either.
It's easy to sit in an arm chair and say sarcastic things such as "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" and then use that as an excuse to do nothing. This may not be an ideal solution. But given the alternatives, it may be worth trying.
According to NASA, research has shown that you need at least 3% lead in the solder alloy to prevent whiskering.
There are conformal coatings which can delay the effects of tin whiskering, but that's all they do. They do not prevent the tin whisker from forming.
There are many tests out there which test for strength of the connection. But very few test for whiskering. We need to be careful when discussing this subject. Oh, and one other thing: the new solder alloys are not compatible with the older tin plated parts. This issue has turned the market in to one great big experiment.
At the end of the day we don't really have much of a lead problem with electronics. Now, the RoHS folk have turned this relatively minor ecological problem in to a major headache for the general public. I hope you weren't expecting that pacemaker to last more than three years....
Very expensive? Compared to what? Going out of business?
What if your bank decided that those pesky safe deposit boxes would be a whole lot cheaper if only they could use unlocked filing cabinets instead. Would you still want to do business with them?
The sad state of affairs here is that the problem doesn't become apparent until someone gets hacked.
I think a firm that has a security breech ought to be forced to make restitution to the customers. Managers may not understand security, but they will understand lawsuits and damages.
Only once you've rubbed a manager's nose in the problem can you expect a solution. We don't HAVE to address everything, but managers should at least be aware of the risks they're taking.
It's a telling point that they've chosen to persecute instead of promote the person who exposed the flaws. These idiots would rather hide in the corner than address the risks up front.
Why were they taught to speak TCP/IP in the first place?
Because, in case you haven't noticed, while these systems are custom designs, we still need to maintain compatibility with COTS hardware and software. For example, which would you rather purchase? Belden 9860 Twinaxial cable? Or CAT5?
There are also issues of training. Which would you rather test for? Profibus? or an Ethernet cable tester? You can get a well trained monkey to do the Ethernet testing. The Profibus tests, however, might prove a bit more esoteric.
At the end of the day, we need the same sorts of tools that IT needs. We rely on COTS hardware, even if we don't use it the same way an IT shop would use it.
What heats the still? What gets the raw materials to your still? At the end of the day, unless you're the farmer with the product on site, this isn't worth doing.
These guys are trying to sell a moonshine still. You can build them very easily. You can bet that whatever impurities they have in "non-edible sugar" will be distilled out.
I think this is a ridiculously inefficient process, and people will want to drink the product instead of burning it.
...and I work for a water utility. And I have said much of the same stuff that you're saying.
Physical presence is often required simply because the controls don't exist outside the plant. --At least, that's what everyone thinks.
What you may not realize is that new equipment is already including an awful lot of wireless gear in their designs by default. We're talking not just about ISA-100 stuff, but 802.11, Bluetooth(!), and so on.
You also may not know what people hook up behind your back. Purchase a steam turbine from one notable manufacturer and they'll insist in the contract on a dial-up modem that they can call at any hour of day or night to interrogate and update the control system.
I've talked to many security researchers. They all tell me the same thing: Whenever a utility says to them that they have no connections to the outside, they're invariably proved wrong. Whenever people say the information flows only one way, they discover that it is often bidirectional.
I work hard to secure our systems. I'm sure you worked pretty hard on the systems you had too. But at the end of the day, you have to contend with some nitwit who thinks that he knows more than everyone else, who runs off to the local computer emporium so that he can stick an extra unmanaged switch in the plant to "do some diagnostics."
I work not only in the design and integration, but also in the field. Yes, I've said the sorts of things I just disparaged, and seen our careful work subverted by ignoramuses. I've seen what happens when people hand out free flash drives.
The difference between design and practice is the same gulf as the difference between theory and reality. I work with both. I'm not looking to blame. I'm merely stating that nobody is as secure as they'd like to think they are.
Yes, but the information on how they're doing IS public. That's the point most people don't understand about this business. There are legions of people who have nothing better to do than oversee the various activities a utility does. They need reports. There are legal requirements for many of these reports.
There are two utility plants known for good physical security: Nuclear Energy and Water Filtration. And there are two utility plants known for some of the very worst industrial cyber-security: Nuclear and Water.
The reason is because they're the ones with some of the most stringent oversight.
You forgot the most important part: The remote terminal unit (RTU). It's an embedded system. It frequently runs a proprietary network stack. The average age for such things is about seven years. The expected lifetime is about 15 years.
You're thinking only of the control center. There is an entirely different world out there in the field.
Wanna know where the real work is? It's at the remote. It's the fail-safe logic, the protection circutry, the I/O wiring, the documentation. It's the validation of the I/O to the screens the operators see. It's the backup control strategies, and so on and so forth.
The control rooms are cheap compared to what it costs to upgrade the field. Real SCADA security must include the RTU. Security methodologies for control protocols as described in IEC 62351 are just now getting posted. Products are just now starting to get built.
And you're right: it will take years before they make a substantial penetration in to the field. Hardening the control center is important, just like hardening your front door is important. But it's only the front door. And it's not where the real money is.
I have been working for a utility for more than 20 years.
The utility business has three tactical concerns: Safety, Availability, and Security --in that order of priority.
Utilities have been running for decades on old infrastructure. Using SCADA, we're managing the existing capacity in the original infrastructures built by our parents and grandparents. They invested monies that in today's economy would make your utility bills look ridiculously small.
Utilities aren't building infrastructure because the rate payers don't know there is a problem with it. Even when they do know, they may not realize how much it is going to cost to really build in the kind of capacity that previous generations were willing to commit to.
No, instead, we get leaders who slash staff, offer early buy outs, and then discover they don't have anyone who knows where anything is or how it works. Realizing they don't know how to hire people who know what they're doing, because they don't know what to look for, they contract the whole thing out to some private company that in theory could run a utility, but in practice is also understaffed.
And against that backdrop you'd have us invest in a tertiary concern called security? I mean, we are all interested, but there are higher priorities right now.
Public utilities are public! They're not armed fortresses. They were originally created to be open institutions where people could see what is going on. They're supposed to share data and cooperate with each other.
Here's the second clue:
There are many who need the information about the utility's performance to do their day to day jobs. The volumes of information and the volumes of regulatory agencies, and other groups they need to inform increase every day. Securing these connections isn't for the faint of heart. I say this as a member of ISA-99, the international standards body for SCADA security.
That said, most companies have secured the distribution systems. However, these are highly customized systems. You can't bolt security on them after the fact. Replacing them is nothing like replacing or upgrading an information system. There is this little problem known as system validation. It is extremely expensive. Furthermore, the standards for securing these systems are still very much in development (I'm on one of those standards committees too).
SCADA systems are in the Ford Model T days. You want to bolt a seat-belt and airbags to it. These things may help, but if you really want things to be secure, we need to rethink the entire infrastructure. And that will not be cheap...
Your comment is precisely what I was going to say. It's a fancy way to measure skin conductivity. B. F. D.
I know some folk who stay cool as a cucumber during such tests, and I know folk who will nervously answer even a question about whether the sky is blue.
Even if one were to calibrate the responses, I don't think much of the method. It's merely one trick among many in the toolbox.
Slashdot Mirror
The pressure to do more at a lower cost never does go away for any business. The question is whether managers understand the investments required to make this happen.
You can't squeeze blood from a stone, we all know that much. However, there is another way and it is quite evil. A perpetrator can trash the infrastructure while things keep moving ahead with deferred maintenance. However, by the time anyone discovers the missing maintenance, the perpetrators will have been through several promotions for their "good performance." They'll be in a fine position to fix the problems they made.
This is how __it happens in a utility. I wish it were legal to prosecute people for this kind of idiotic negligence. Instead, we give them lots of money so they can buy memberships in the premier country clubs, hobnob with other executives, and perpetrate this foolishness all over again while trying make excuses for why everything is falling apart all around them.
...the only way you'll get it is to move up in the electromagnetic spectrum. It had to be a laser based communications system.
The alternative is to smear this crap all over the electromagnetic spectrum. And at this data rate, if you really expect throughput, you can't rely on spread spectrum to save you.
You missed one key point: We haven't built many new runways or airports in the last 20 years. Add to that problem the numerous reliever GA airports closing every year and you can see that the large airports are getting swamped with traffic they were never designed to handle.
Most of the congestion in our modern airspace system is on the runway! Modern navigation systems have significantly improved air safety and situational awareness. The chance of a mid-air collision away from the runway environment is next to nothing compared to the chance of collision on runways, and on the final approach path.
And in case you're wondering, the modern super-jumbo aircraft, the A380, doesn't really help this situation much. The problem there is wake turbulence. They leave behind a wake in the air that is dangerous to most other aircraft. They're required to leave at least a five mile trail of free airspace behind them. So while they can take more passengers, they still need to keep the runway clear for a length of time that basically nullifies any gains in passenger movement.
I own a Uniden BC-996 scanner. I monitor fire fighters and police activities in my area across several trunking systems. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's scary. And sometimes it's sad.
The entertainment value is there. Even my very non-geeky wife turns it on to listen.
However, many people can't take these scanners with them in their cars. Many state laws prevent them from doing that UNLESS they have permission from the state police to monitor from a car, or you happen to have a federally significant reason, such as possession of a ham radio license.
Rodney King's beating wasn't just a matter of a video tape. There were people who monitored the MDT traffic between the various cops involved. Oh, and by the way, MDT monitoring is illegal now, even from your home.
If you want to offend a cop, drive around with a scanner in your car, configured for the trunking system the local cops are using. They do not like it when people demonstrate their ability to monitor them.
...if I understand something called "ground effect" correctly.
It's a good thing you hedged your statement because I have doubts that you understand ground effect.
Ground effect is caused by the disruption of airflow from wing-tip vortices. For airplanes, the disruption of this source of drag from the wing tips results in extra lift as the airplane approaches the ground to land.
For Helicopters and Gyro-copters the proximity of the main rotor to ground also disrupts the air curling over the edge of the rotors. They too get a slight boost of lift.
However, this Jet-Pack uses a ducted fan. The fans duct contains the wing tip (fan blade) vortices, so there is no ground effect. And don't get me started about the exhausted air --that doesn't result in any extra thrust for a rocket, nor would it result in any extra thrust for a ducted fan.
...or it could be an arrogant smarty pants has just singlehandedly built a WAN and doesn't want his bosses to "f___ it up." They've already sent most of the competent, experienced staff packing. He may well have been one of the few well qualified, experienced people left.
His bosses, dense as they probably are, must have finally had a close encounter with a clue stick massive enough to get their attention. They in turn demand a password so that they can hand the keys over to some dweeb who at the very least is probably inexperienced, if not a completely incompetent turd.
Childs says no. Bosses make official demand. Childs tells them to go get it for themselves --if they can. Out come the handcuffs and lawyers, and we get to read about this BS in the news.
I think bosses are compensating for allowing nonsense like this to go this far in the first place. Childs probably figures that as long as he's going down in flames, he might as well take few idiots with him.
I think there may be more than enough blame to go around.
I can't continue to discuss this with you because you keep moving the topic of discussion.
You keep returning to that term "responsible" and I don't thin we agree on what it means.
Except for a few pathologically evil people, the vast majority of the population seeks a better world in some way. What you're harping on is the fact that someone may not be ecologically responsible, to the exclusion of any other possibility. And you know what? If that were the only issue in the world, I'd agree that you have a point. But responsibility also refers to safety, fiduciary, social, and other aspects as well. These parameters intersect and often work against each other.
You are trying to make the long term case that environmental responsibility is ALWAYS best. I'm saying that if you don't take care of short term issues as well, you won't have to worry about the longer term because you won't be around long enough to care.
I propose that when your child gets sick, that you do nothing. I propose that we not build hospitals, roads, power plants, ambulances, plastics factories, refineries, pharmaceutical plants, etcetera. I propose that we all just do nothing.
We are a part of this world, whether you realize it or not. We are already trying stuff inadvertently. Pointing at failures doesn't mean that we shouldn't try something to clean up problems. Why not try to clean it up? If you don't make a few mistakes, it means you're not trying hard enough.
If we listen to you, people will die off, but, hey, that's ok because it restores "Gaia's balance."
Keep smoking whatever it is that you've got there, buddy. It's real good stuff.
It's easy to say things like what you say with 20/20 hindsight. The missing piece of your argument are the pollution standards. I'm not suggesting for a minute that we pollute excessively. However, we can't expect companies to go well beyond the extra effort required to reduce pollution or power consumption by another order of magnitude.
This is why we negotiate environmental agreements. If we set the bar too high, then nobody will be able to afford to produce anything. We'll have a pristine environment that nobody can afford to live in. Too many other countries will have lower standards, and they'll produce the products, not you. If we set the bar too low, then we'll be swimming in our own filth. If the choice is really business or outsourcing the manufacturing, guess what happens?
I'm not beating up on China. What they're doing is not sustainable. I believe even they know that. What I am showing is that we live in a world where you have to make compromises. Company B's fault in your example, is that they couldn't sell product at a reasonable price because they were spending too much on the process. And if the local regulators had pushed the pollution requirements to Company B's level, who could say if both companies would have managed to survive? Remember, we live in a global economy...
You're right, we should attempt to figure out how we can mix this effectively in the ocean. However, at some point, we have to stop studying it, and try it on a small scale to see what effects it has. If the effects are pretty much as predicted, then we should carefully scale up.
I'm not suggesting for a minute that people should embrace full production tomorrow. But we have penalties for sitting on our hands as much as we have penalties for trying something. We need to weigh the potential benefits against the potential for something to go wrong.
This is why we have politics. These things simply aren't knowable in a quantitative sense. At some point we have to appeal to the public at large for choosing which risk they feel most comfortable with.
Contrary to popular notions of economics, where "people believe that cheaper is always better, and anyone spending money on anything is always good", waste is actually bad for the economy.
This is an interesting notion, but I feel you've missed something. I would have said "Excessive waste is bad for the economy." And therein lies the problem.
Clearly, we have reached a price where we have to move these waste/efficiency set-points for most energy hungry applications. But it doesn't do a company any good to continue efficiency for efficiency's sake. Companies have failed because of over-engineering too.
In a way, Al Gore was right. It really IS about the carbon emissions. The problem is that his lifestyle pushes significantly more Carbon Dioxide in to the environment while using current market technologies.
I don't see the efforts for producing better SUVs as necessarily appeasement. Yes, efficient compact cars have been on the market for some time. What we do not have are efficient vehicles that can handle a family and all the stuff that tends to go with them. We need a bit of realism here. This isn't about the style of car. It's about the efficiency of the drive train and the power source we use to move it.
I think people are try to be responsible. The problem is that no two people seem to agree on what "responsible" is. The way I see it, "responsible" development means to do whatever some pompous personality says is good for us. That doesn't have a good track record either. At best, it only slows development, but it doesn't stop it.
This solution may actually reverse the effects. I'll concede that in many if not most cases where people tinker with the environment there are unintended consequences. But the alternative such as "responsible" practices aren't producing better results either.
It's easy to sit in an arm chair and say sarcastic things such as "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" and then use that as an excuse to do nothing. This may not be an ideal solution. But given the alternatives, it may be worth trying.
I wish I had mod points, I wish I had mod points, I wish I had mod points...
According to NASA, research has shown that you need at least 3% lead in the solder alloy to prevent whiskering.
There are conformal coatings which can delay the effects of tin whiskering, but that's all they do. They do not prevent the tin whisker from forming.
There are many tests out there which test for strength of the connection. But very few test for whiskering. We need to be careful when discussing this subject. Oh, and one other thing: the new solder alloys are not compatible with the older tin plated parts. This issue has turned the market in to one great big experiment.
At the end of the day we don't really have much of a lead problem with electronics. Now, the RoHS folk have turned this relatively minor ecological problem in to a major headache for the general public. I hope you weren't expecting that pacemaker to last more than three years....
Very expensive? Compared to what? Going out of business?
What if your bank decided that those pesky safe deposit boxes would be a whole lot cheaper if only they could use unlocked filing cabinets instead. Would you still want to do business with them?
The sad state of affairs here is that the problem doesn't become apparent until someone gets hacked.
I think a firm that has a security breech ought to be forced to make restitution to the customers. Managers may not understand security, but they will understand lawsuits and damages.
Only once you've rubbed a manager's nose in the problem can you expect a solution. We don't HAVE to address everything, but managers should at least be aware of the risks they're taking.
It's a telling point that they've chosen to persecute instead of promote the person who exposed the flaws. These idiots would rather hide in the corner than address the risks up front.
Why were they taught to speak TCP/IP in the first place?
Because, in case you haven't noticed, while these systems are custom designs, we still need to maintain compatibility with COTS hardware and software. For example, which would you rather purchase? Belden 9860 Twinaxial cable? Or CAT5?
There are also issues of training. Which would you rather test for? Profibus? or an Ethernet cable tester? You can get a well trained monkey to do the Ethernet testing. The Profibus tests, however, might prove a bit more esoteric.
At the end of the day, we need the same sorts of tools that IT needs. We rely on COTS hardware, even if we don't use it the same way an IT shop would use it.
What heats the still? What gets the raw materials to your still? At the end of the day, unless you're the farmer with the product on site, this isn't worth doing.
These guys are trying to sell a moonshine still. You can build them very easily. You can bet that whatever impurities they have in "non-edible sugar" will be distilled out.
I think this is a ridiculously inefficient process, and people will want to drink the product instead of burning it.
What could possibly go wrong?
...and I work for a water utility. And I have said much of the same stuff that you're saying.
Physical presence is often required simply because the controls don't exist outside the plant. --At least, that's what everyone thinks.
What you may not realize is that new equipment is already including an awful lot of wireless gear in their designs by default. We're talking not just about ISA-100 stuff, but 802.11, Bluetooth(!), and so on.
You also may not know what people hook up behind your back. Purchase a steam turbine from one notable manufacturer and they'll insist in the contract on a dial-up modem that they can call at any hour of day or night to interrogate and update the control system.
I've talked to many security researchers. They all tell me the same thing: Whenever a utility says to them that they have no connections to the outside, they're invariably proved wrong. Whenever people say the information flows only one way, they discover that it is often bidirectional.
I work hard to secure our systems. I'm sure you worked pretty hard on the systems you had too. But at the end of the day, you have to contend with some nitwit who thinks that he knows more than everyone else, who runs off to the local computer emporium so that he can stick an extra unmanaged switch in the plant to "do some diagnostics."
I work not only in the design and integration, but also in the field. Yes, I've said the sorts of things I just disparaged, and seen our careful work subverted by ignoramuses. I've seen what happens when people hand out free flash drives.
The difference between design and practice is the same gulf as the difference between theory and reality. I work with both. I'm not looking to blame. I'm merely stating that nobody is as secure as they'd like to think they are.
Yes, but the information on how they're doing IS public. That's the point most people don't understand about this business. There are legions of people who have nothing better to do than oversee the various activities a utility does. They need reports. There are legal requirements for many of these reports.
There are two utility plants known for good physical security: Nuclear Energy and Water Filtration. And there are two utility plants known for some of the very worst industrial cyber-security: Nuclear and Water.
The reason is because they're the ones with some of the most stringent oversight.
It's not about the physical security...
You forgot the most important part: The remote terminal unit (RTU). It's an embedded system. It frequently runs a proprietary network stack. The average age for such things is about seven years. The expected lifetime is about 15 years.
You're thinking only of the control center. There is an entirely different world out there in the field.
Wanna know where the real work is? It's at the remote. It's the fail-safe logic, the protection circutry, the I/O wiring, the documentation. It's the validation of the I/O to the screens the operators see. It's the backup control strategies, and so on and so forth.
The control rooms are cheap compared to what it costs to upgrade the field. Real SCADA security must include the RTU. Security methodologies for control protocols as described in IEC 62351 are just now getting posted. Products are just now starting to get built.
And you're right: it will take years before they make a substantial penetration in to the field. Hardening the control center is important, just like hardening your front door is important. But it's only the front door. And it's not where the real money is.
I have been working for a utility for more than 20 years.
The utility business has three tactical concerns: Safety, Availability, and Security --in that order of priority.
Utilities have been running for decades on old infrastructure. Using SCADA, we're managing the existing capacity in the original infrastructures built by our parents and grandparents. They invested monies that in today's economy would make your utility bills look ridiculously small.
Utilities aren't building infrastructure because the rate payers don't know there is a problem with it. Even when they do know, they may not realize how much it is going to cost to really build in the kind of capacity that previous generations were willing to commit to.
No, instead, we get leaders who slash staff, offer early buy outs, and then discover they don't have anyone who knows where anything is or how it works. Realizing they don't know how to hire people who know what they're doing, because they don't know what to look for, they contract the whole thing out to some private company that in theory could run a utility, but in practice is also understaffed.
And against that backdrop you'd have us invest in a tertiary concern called security? I mean, we are all interested, but there are higher priorities right now.
I don't know why you got modded insightful.
Here's the first clue:
Public utilities are public! They're not armed fortresses. They were originally created to be open institutions where people could see what is going on. They're supposed to share data and cooperate with each other.
Here's the second clue:
There are many who need the information about the utility's performance to do their day to day jobs. The volumes of information and the volumes of regulatory agencies, and other groups they need to inform increase every day. Securing these connections isn't for the faint of heart. I say this as a member of ISA-99, the international standards body for SCADA security.
That said, most companies have secured the distribution systems. However, these are highly customized systems. You can't bolt security on them after the fact. Replacing them is nothing like replacing or upgrading an information system. There is this little problem known as system validation. It is extremely expensive. Furthermore, the standards for securing these systems are still very much in development (I'm on one of those standards committees too).
SCADA systems are in the Ford Model T days. You want to bolt a seat-belt and airbags to it. These things may help, but if you really want things to be secure, we need to rethink the entire infrastructure. And that will not be cheap...
Your comment is precisely what I was going to say. It's a fancy way to measure skin conductivity. B. F. D.
I know some folk who stay cool as a cucumber during such tests, and I know folk who will nervously answer even a question about whether the sky is blue.
Even if one were to calibrate the responses, I don't think much of the method. It's merely one trick among many in the toolbox.
Yes, they do.
A bored scientist is no better than any other bored professional. You don't want to see what happens next...