Secure SCADA-IoT Platform for Industrial Automation and Control: A Collaborative-Communication Designed Model ^†

Abstract

This paper discusses the new auspicious trends of internet of things (IoT) and its advanced developments in various sectors of today’s IT arena; including for industrial sectors. Each object acts as a communication node (or entity) that is able to communicate with other nodes; and corresponding information could be accessed and controlled; via several of today’s commonly used electronic devices such as laptops and cellular devices; etc.; through an IoT-designed platform. Moreover; in industrial automation sectors; the employment of IoT is very advantageous; in terms of remote communication support; low-cost operations and maintenance; and autonomous collaborations among remote networked field devices; etc. The facility of autonomous collaborations provisioned by IoT; in the context of a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system as part of an industrial control system; somehow exists in a distributed network protocol (DNP3) during automation and controls. Therefore; the current study takes the step to model a new IoT framework for a SCADA system; which will be efficient at facilitating industrial automation through the collaborative DNP3-Modbus acquisitions and automation; called the SCADA-IoT system. An IoT gateway is employed and configured that supports for both SCADA protocols; such as DNP3 and Modbus and is efficient at communicating; from networked field devices; with inter-processing from both. In the overall SCADA-IoT design; the transmission is carried from an enormous amount of sensors and/or field devices; employing proprietary and non-proprietary protocols; further; sent information is analyzed via big data; stored in a cloud center; monitored and controlled over a SCADA-IoT supportive platform. At the same time; information security (IS) is a big associated challenge and one of the main contributions of this study. Thus; this study also analyzed the potential security mechanisms for securing SCADA-IoT and found cryptography to be a noteworthy security solution; based on the proposed system requirements and its communication demands.