In this article I will outline a key ICS components.
Overview
ICS underpin fabric of our society. Typically used in industries such as electrical, water and wastewater, oil and gas, chemical, transportation and manufacturing. Most ICS in use today were developed years ago. In most cases physically isolated based on proprietary hardware and software with communication protocols not suitable for today environments.
Fundamentals
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition ( SCADA) is distributed systems used to control and monitor dispersed assets. Based on the information received supervisry commands can be pushed to remote station control device/ field device. This can be a valve, breakers, collecting data from the sensors or alarm conditions. This system is typically used in water, oil and gas pipe lines, power grids and transportation.
Distributed Control System (DCS) are used to control industrial processes within the same geographical location.
Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) is used in SCADA and DCS as the control component of an overall hierarchical systems to provide local management of processes through feedback control.
Key Components
Control Server - Host DCS and PLC software communicating with field devices
SCADA Server/ Master Terminal Unit ( MTU) - Master
Remote Terminal Unit ( RTU) - field devices used for data acquisition supporting SCADA remote station
PLC
Human Machine Interface ( HMI)
Data Log
I/O Server
Network
There are different characteristics for each layer within the control system hierarchy.
Fieldbus Network- linking field devices to PLC or other controllers
Control network
Routers, Firewalls, Media Converters
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