Drive long-term value with SCADA system audits

SCADA systems can provide tremendous benefits when properly designed, developed, and maintained. However, they are often treated as just another piece of equipment rather than a strategic asset. By giving insufficient attention to the SCADA system, facilities not only miss out on these competitive advantages but also encounter problems that result in downtime, create safety issues, or expose them to cyberattacks. Regular, thorough SCADA audits are essential to identify and address these risks before they lead to failures.

An industrial control system can provide tremendous business benefits and competitive advantages when properly architected, built, and managed. A SCADA system’s ability to perform real-time monitoring and control, provide alerts for hazardous conditions, and support predictive maintenance through data analysis is contingent on an optimal setup.

Why invest in maintenance?

Regular audits are necessary to ensure the reliability, security, and efficiency of the SCADA system. Audits are a means to not only for performance optimization but also for threat neutralization.

• The operation of critical infrastructure, such as power plants, water treatment facilities, and manufacturing, needs to avoid downtime as much as possible. Audits ensure these systems function correctly and minimize the risk of operational failure.
• SCADA systems are often targets for cyberattacks. Given that they oversee processes across large areas, often relying on public communication networks, they are highly at risk. Security is further complicated because SCADA systems often use multiple vendors and fragmented infrastructure, making it crucial to conduct regular audits and identity potential vulnerabilities.
• Industries that are subject to regulations need auditing to ensure compliance and eliminate the risk of penalty or reputational damage.
• Even when systems can appear functional, there can be numerous issues present below the surface that manifest at critical events or future dates. Ad hoc improvements can only buy time until a proper overall solution is developed and can often introduce new issues into the system. We advocate eliminating technical debt while implementing a continuous, holistic system improvement strategy. 

What should an audit include?

The value of the audit process lies in the detailed findings, conclusions, and critical recommendations to remedying identified system issues.

During EA’s audit process, engineers also develop a SCADA roadmap alongside clients to comprehensively improve facilities and enable them to reap all the benefits of the automation hardware and software packages they currently possess.

In a standardized audit process, engineers assess the condition based on:

• Disaster recovery and prevention: based on factors such as the existence of backups, regular disaster response procedures and training of personnel, electrical panel wiring documentation, and electrical panel safety.
• Documentation and change management: tracking and documentation of SCADA changes and requests, inventory and asset management, adherence to and review of the master plan.
• Infrastructure: condition of electrical cabinets, aging status of hardware, redundancy
• Security: best practices for network segregation, firewalls, cultural analysis of the organization’s procedures, and remote access authentication
• Software: Is the software on the most current and supported version?
• System performance: evaluating process performance by measuring downtime and interruptions. Is the alarm notification set up correctly? Are the reports reliable and easy to generate? How easy is the SCADA screen to use?

The audit results are typically represented with these five deliverables:

• An executive summary of the audit score, top findings, and recommendations
• A dashboard (red, yellow, green) showing the status of each audited area compared to best practices
• A table of each audited area with scoring criteria and justification
• A report explaining the detailed findings, conclusions, and recommendations of each audited area
• A summary checklist of all recommendations