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Table 11.3 Comparison between office based IT systems and Industrial Automation
and Control Systems.
Office based systems Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACSs)
Office based systems are typically replaced every three to IACSs are expected to operate for extended periods of
five years and generally keep pace with current time (in many cases tens of years) and as a result may
technologies and standards. incorporate old or even obsolete hardware or software,
which was current technology when the system was
designed.
Maintenance and support staff will normally be familiar The equipment will become increasingly unfamiliar to the
with the latest advances in computing technology staff supporting the equipment over time
The failure and rebooting of an office based or In many cases if a computerebased IACS crashes or mis-
information system is not normally considered a safety operates there is the possibility for a serious safety event
issue or hazardous activity. as discussed in Section 2.7.6.
Rebooting an IACS should be considered a hazardous
activity, particularly if the system has shut down in an
uncontrolled fashion.
Patching and updating software is done almost daily on IACS often never get patched or updated due to the risk
many IT systems, even if there is no way to test these of introducing unexpected problems, as there is a lack of
changes in advance of deployment. a fully featured test or duplicate system on which to
As shown in several examples in the financial sector a validate any software changes to the operating system.
systems failure after a software modification can lead to
serious reputational damage, but no irretrievable loss of
equipment.
Office based systems use hardware and software that is Due to the length of operation and the complexity of the
available from many sources and has active vendor design, ICASs may incorporate proprietary hardware and
support. software where the original vendors may no longer be
trading or no longer willing to support their older
equipment and systems.

11.5 Cybersecurity

Many SCADA and industrial automation control systems are as a matter of course
connected to the company’s corporate network and hence the Internet. While the
merging of both manufacturing and commercial information will permit the optimisa-
tion of manufacturing and distribution processes, the consequence is that the
interconnections exposes the safety-critical industrial network to the myriad security
challenges current present on the Internet. If processes are monitored and controlled by
devices connected over a network, then a malicious attack over a network has the
potential to cause significant damage to the plant. One of the first recorded events of this
type was in 2010, when Iran’s nuclear manufacturing facilities was disrupted by the
introduction of the Stuxnet worm into a centrifuge facility (Chen and Abu-Nimeh, 2011).
Apart from causing physical, economic, and reputational loss to the company,
an attack against any industrial process network might also adversely affect the