Important Consideration of Industrial Network Security and Protect SCADA & ICS System

Now a day, Cybersecurity is a vital part of process and infrastructure industry operations. Industrial  Network security refers to protection of internal components and system from internal and external malicious attacks to maintain the Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality.

Industrial cyber security refers to the protection of internal components and system from internal and external malicious attacks to maintain the Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality. Its protect the industries against loss or damage.

Most of the network devices used in the industrial network are designed to meet the functional requirement, safety, reliability and real time response.

They were physically isolated from the outside networks. Most of the time only proprietary protocol and solutions are used for the industry network. On a later stage, TCP/IP protocol is introduced to industry network which connects the industrial network to external network.

The introduction of TCP/IP to the industrial network creates new possibilities for better connectivity but at the same time provide rich opportunities to adversaries to exploit the vulnerabilities.

The root cause of this intense new risk relates to the complexity of ICS legacy system that was never originally designed to stop cyber-attacks. Legacy water pump installed

Legacy water pump installed at the plant 15 years back, was obviously not designed to address modern cybersecurity attacks. Complex legacy technology and high attack consequence lead to a high cybersecurity risk for the most industrial network.

There could be any reason for an incident to have happened. Likewise

• Lack of redundancy in the network.
• No segmentation of network.
• No security perimeter is defined.
• Firewall is not incorporated in the network architecture.
• No deep inspection of packets moving from field device to field device or control server.
• Insecure remote connections.
• Lack of compatibility of security architectural components with legacy protocols and system.
• No mechanism to identify the changes in the configuration of field device and files.

The biggest challenge in the ICS and SCADA security protection is that the infrastructure used in ICS & SCADA having significantly legacy technology. This includes older protocol, proprietary control components.

How to protect SCADA & ICS system

To protect the SCADA and ICS need to introduce the security architectural components to industrial system networks.

This includes firewalls, VPN, and router and so on. Secondly, need the security products that can understand the industrial functions and behave in accordance. Few companies are doing their best to make fit their product for industrial network likewise Phoenix contact.

Phoenix Contact offers a range of products for industrial network and cyber security that exclusively design to work in environmental rigidness.

MGuard product range is a comprehensive solution for industrial security that will strengthen the industrial cyber security posture without introducing any complexity in the network.With its mGuard product line of network security appliances, PHOENIX CONTACT is offering router, firewall, VPN, QoS, and intrusion detection, OPC/Modbus inspection, integrity monitoring, and more supporting functionalities, complemented with highly scalable device management software.

Devices, which are both easy to install and service, can be integrated either in production systems or connected upstream to existing systems in continuous operation.