We have recently noticed a marked difference between the "colleagues" who are already talking about the future of the IoT/IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) and our Customers, Utility and Aqueduct technical engineers, who call us today to set up a remote control system which must manage the distribution of water in homes, offices, schools, hospitals, industries, shopping centers and all the other buildings where we live and where we work.
Just recently, by the way, I was asked to write a few notes commenting on the document CSA-Cloud Security Alliance “Security Guidance for Early Adopters of the IOT”, in which emerges among the hot topics to be addressed, the one relating to the security of the protocols used in the Internet of Things.
I admit it: the topic of protocols used by remote control systems may not be so "fancy and trendy". But it is precisely these protocols that make systems distributed over the territory kilometers away talk to each other, using every possible type of transmission, even where there is not a shred of internet connection, where the “digital divide” of our peninsula, long and narrow, with lots of mountains and shaded areas, where 4G does not take and even 3G is hard, and where it is still necessary to rely on the dear and old, but always live and reliable, GPRS.
That's why our customers, while watching with interest what happens in the IIOT field, remain with their feet firmly planted in the world of Remote Control, where wells, dams, pumping stations, purifiers, valves and shutters "talk" to each other and with the Control Room in the Aqueduct Headquarters across the dear old (from 1979!), modbus protocol, or even the “more modern” IEC-104 (from 2004)!
Of course, then we also use OPC and latest OPC-UA, and we manage, together with a series of countermeasures and protections specifically designed for these systems, to also reinforce the security part, to make our remote control systems more reliable, available and performing, and make the water service… “safer”!