SCADA cyber security lessons from the movie ‘Eagle Eye’

In the movie, several severe infrastructure security breaches are accomplished before any one involved becomes aware of them. This lack of security monitoring is not so far-fetched, and provides lessons for control engineers.

By Control Engineering Staff November 13, 2008

In the movie “Eagle Eye,” several severe infrastructure security breaches are accomplished before any one involved becomes aware that such breaches had occurred.n and Steve Hamburg in their new blog, Industrial Cyber Security, available through the home page of Control Engineering .

Steve Hamburg (left) and Matt Luallen

Luallen and Hamburg say 24/7 event monitoring in process control systems is very important, and context is very important to detecting events of interest.

“Identifying system normalcy provides a valuable baseline to analyze against and, luckily, our process control systems are very deterministic in nature in one of two operating states – normal and emergency conditions,” they say.

Commonly, a lack of clarity exists between traditional business operations, information technology, and industrial control.

“We recommend starting with very specific monitoring criteria for control systems.

To view Luallen and Hamburg’s other recommendations and share your own, visit the entire 11/11/08 blog posting .

of Matt Luallen talking about cyber security is also avialable.

– Edited by Renee Robbins , senior editor Control Engineering News Desk Register here and scroll down to select your choice of eNewsletters free .