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RE: No comments?

Comment comment by VnutZ on 15 April 2008

I've always been bothered with the fact that control systems are ever remotely accessible. I suppose somewhere, someone can make the argument that in an emergency situation, an expert can remotely take charge and correct an issue. I for one think that if your employees cannot be trained to be experts on their equipment, then you need to hire better employees. There is no legitimate reason for critical control systems to be on a network accessible outside the facility.

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RE: No comments? by ldsudduth :: NR6

I suppose somewhere, someone can make the argument that in an emergency situation, an expert can remotely take charge and correct an issue.

No, you can't make that argument; your supposition is correct; the employees need to have a high-level of expertise with the Control Systems. Granted, you can't be an expert on everything, but there should be *someone* that your personnel can contact in the event of an emergency who can guide them through a procedure to minimize impact or even fix the issue at hand.

\I don't expect the person running the gear to know what to do if the computer fails (that's why you have backup equipment), but certainly there should be a procedure to follow--even if it's a flow chart in a book.

At one utility, they would have smaller plants controlled by the larger facility during off-shift hours--effectively control was 'transferred' to a Master Panel. As long as you have connectivity between the two facilities that system works well. Thankfully, things are usually programmed to fail into a safe running mode.

The worst thing I ever saw: A facility with direct PC-Anywhere access via modem to the control system, and VNC being used to control the PC without any security of any kind, including passwords. The phone numbers for the modems (there were more than one) were unlisted, but any good wardialing program would find it. Today, that would be a security violation, but not against an law; only against guidelines from Homeland Security.

Posted 15 April 2008, Hide, Parent, Reply