Beyond SCADA: Network Embedded Control Systems

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This NSF award supports two linked workshops, held in Washington, DC, March 14-15 and March 16-17, 2006. The first workshop, entitled. Beyond SCADA: Networked Embedded Control Systems initiates an effort to identify key technologies that must be developed for not only reducing the vulnerabilities of existing SCADA systems but also planning the next generation of distributed network embedded control systems for our National infrastructures. This workshop is planned with the guidance and support of the interagency High Confidence Software and Systems Coordinating Group. The context for this workshop is the ubiquitous use of information and communication technologies that has pervaded other infrastructures, rendering them more intelligent, increasingly interconnected, complex, interdependent, and therefore more vulnerable. They are global and geographically distributed beyond any jurisdictional or governmental boundary. Todays critical national and large-scale industrial systems depend on ICT characteristic of an aging infrastructure. They exhibit rudimentary control and coordination automation, are poorly secured, and operations often are driven to hazardous safety and security practice due to the cost of adoption for needed new (and vulnerable) technologies such as wireless networking. The United States and Europe share common concerns for renewing and protecting large infrastructures such as power grids, transportation systems, telecommunication infrastructure, health-care systems, and safety-critical manufacturing systems (e.g., chemical manufacturing). Following the US HCSS meeting is the second workshop, a joint US-EU workshop for collaborative research on similar themes, titled Large ICT-based Infrastructures and Interdependencies: Control, Safety, Security and Dependa