A Survey of Security in SCADA Networks: Current Issues and Future Challenges

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are used for monitoring industrial devices. However, their security faces the threat of being compromised due to the increasing use of open access networks. The primary objective of this survey paper is to provide a comparative study of the on-going security research in SCADA systems. The paper provides a classification of attacks based on security requirements and network protocol layers. To secure the communication between nodes of SCADA networks, various security standards have been developed by different organizations. We conduct a study of the security standards developed for SCADA networks along with their vulnerabilities. Researchers have proposed various security schemes to overcome the weaknesses of SCADA standards. The paper organizes security schemes based on current standards, detection, and prevention of attacks. It also addresses the future challenges that SCADA networks may face, in particular, from quantum attacks. Furthermore, it outlines directions for further research in the field.