Necessities and Demand of SCADA Software- Why Would You Put SCADA

SCADA is a long ongoing term which means to keep your internet secure. From last few decades it has severely risen to maximize the system uptime against IT department. This has led to a division and is most important for control infrastructure and municipal monitoring to expand towards the Industrial Internet of Things. In this article, you’ll find a brief overview to scada software and why it is necessary to minimize the risk.

SCADA through "Thick" n "Thin"

In order to know how SCADA system provides remote access, you must have a general understanding between think and thin clients.

Thick Clients

These are the computers on which SCADA is installed and where server communicates with PLCs and RTUs and log process value to database. So, as per the software licensing, the client can be serves as development nodes and operator workstation. Usually, two to thicker client can be configured and synchronized taking one holding to fail or go offline.

Thin Clients

This allows authorized user to control and monitor their system from device that doesn’t have SCADA installed on them. These can be tablets, smart phones, network computers, etc. Many free scada platform allows thin client from any device and thereby utilizes within their firewall as flexible approach to operator workstation. It should be noted that thin client cannot act as redundant SCADA servers,

So why take the risk?

• Increased Response Time

The ability to remotely view alarms and live processes data and take appropriate control action does make all the difference to emerging results. In many ways, consequences of major loss of service can stiff line for utilities and also cause serious legal consequences for superintendents or manages.

• Changing Operator Roles

It is always a common scene to see operators sitting in from of SCADA screen waiting to be told when something wrong is about to happen. They want to go out in field adding new sites, and deal with current issues or even perform preventative measures. As such, on-site access to historical data & real time data can drastically reduce maintenance time & improve operators safety.

SCADA in the cloud

Hosted or cloud based SCADA system takes the idea of thin client and serves multiple end users who access their private datas. This subscription model makes it possible to utilize limited means to adopt enterprise solution without the need to dig into capital budgets.

Best practices for online SCADA applications

Once you decide to connect your application to the internet, you’ll have to need some best practices apply to it for sure safety and performance solution.

• Have a Firewall

If you have a network, you need software or mechanical firewall to control access from the internet. Now, there are numerous surprising utilities available who have neglected this precaution. Though many of these platform include security feature that doesn’t eliminate the need for firewall.

• Use Encryption

In order to protect security information exchange between think client and server, you must ensure that your scada software supports encryption protocol like VPNs or TLC. Another thing, login credential should not be held in any way that can be decrypted and recover.

James is one of the professional technical working in various design and application tools. He has deep known is scada software and can help to show you different monitoring and real time data acquiring process through it. If you are currently in need for any web based monitoring infrastructure, you should seek out for help now.

Pioneer in the industry of automation, flexible manufacturing systems, Cncs and so on, has presented his views here about Scada Free.