1.2 Development of ICS Information Security

As industrial informatization advances at a rapid pace and the industrial Internet, industrial clouds, and other new technologies spring up, information and network technologies and IoT technologies have found wide application in smart grid systems, intelligent transportation systems, and industrial production systems.

For the sake of inter-system collaboration and information sharing, ICSs are breaking out of the traditional model of previous dedicated systems that run in a closed-off manner and begin to incorporate some standard and universal communication protocols and software and hardware systems. Some ICSs can even connect to the Internet in one way or another, thus breaking the protection barrier formed by the enclosed network, but exposing those systems to more threats.

As ICSs are most commonly seen in a country’s critical industries such as electricity, transportation, petrochemical, and nuclear sectors, cyberattacks targeting those systems will cause a more serious social impact and economic loss. Out of political, military, economic, and religious reasons, adversary organizations and countries and terrorist criminals can make industrial control systems their attack targets for malicious intents. (mais…)

Development of ICS Security

1.1 Development of Industrial Intelligence

The following figure shows the development history of industrial control systems (ICSs).

The history of ICSs can date back to the 18th century when James Watt improved the steam engine by adding a throttling controller, i.e., a centrifugal governor. The centrifugal governor works like this: It obtains feedback signals by using a shaft around which it rotates with the steam engine. Also, it adjusts the positions of flyballs with the aid of centrifugal force, so as to regulate the steam throttle for control of the rotational speed of the steam engine. It is believed that this kind of centrifugal governor marks the beginning of automatic regulation and automatic control. (mais…)