- One of my favorite jobs when I was a young man
was working in a cheese plant.
Yeah (laughs), I made cheese.
I made 23,000 pounds of cheddar cheese
every night in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
It wasn't just me; I was part of a big crew
of about 100 guys, and all we did
every night was make cheese.
No, I'm not kidding.
It was really a cool job, though.
I don't know if you know anything about making cheese,
but basically you take milk and you put stuff in it
and it curdles, and now you have curds and whey.
You age that a little bit, then you drain out
the whey, and you take the curds
and you squish it together and you end up
having delicious cheddar cheese.
I made some good cheese, too, by the way.
Anyway, in this process; you can only imagine
big vats where we're stirring the milk
and the rennet together.
These things have to be stirred.
There are things watching temperature, and pressure,
and light, and timers, and all this stuff
just pouring through huge pipes into these
big tables that would stir it some more
and then drain out.
It was an amazing process to watch.
In order for this to work well, we need a lot of
what are called industrial controls.
An industrial control has been around for
since we've had industry (laughs), pretty much.
But it's where we use automation to control
the process of any type of system.
So in the cheddar cheese plant, we would have
controllers that would do simple things like
watch the temperature; if the temperature got
too low, it would turn on a burner, stuff like that.
Computing has changed the face of
industrial control systems.
When we talk about ICS today,
what we're really talking about are computers,
really nothing more than glorified PCs,
that are doing the job that used to be done
50 years ago with analog systems and timers
and all kinds of crazy stuff.
The Network+ is gonna be covering this,
but just on a very light way.
So what I wanna do first of all here is
get some of the terms of ICS down for you
so you can appreciate it and know what to do
when you see the Network+.
If we're gonna take a look at a typical ICS system ...
Keep in mind, I'm showing you the most
simple one there is here.
First of all (laughs), you're gonna have
some kind of machine.
Yep, that's the word you're gonna
see on Network+; machine.
I don't care what this blue box is.
It could be making cheese or making motherboards;
it doesn't really matter to me.
But it is a single device that needs to have
some kind of control and monitoring.
The cornerstone of all this is
something called the controller.
CompTIA's a little strange on this
because what they call their Comptroller,
and make sure you know this for their test,
is they call this an ICS server.
This is basically a PC, but it's designed
specifically to handle processing.
In order to do this, it's gonna have
particular connections for things like,
in this example, we have sensors.
Sensors are gonna be stuff like watching for
temperature, or watching for the level of fluid,
or watching for something happening.
Sensors are watching for things to take place.
The ICS server is also going to have actuators.
An actuator is gonna be things like a pump,
or it's going to be a light, or it's gonna be
some kind of motor.
But they basically actuate based on sensor readings.
This system is fairly autonomous, but you need to
be able to monitor.
What if we're making chocolate instead of vanilla
or things like that?
The last piece of a simple ICS system is
going to be the interface.
The interface is where the human beings talk to
the ICS server so that they can monitor
the process if they wanna make changes,
any types of adjustment.
Those are the basic pieces.
This has been a great system, and ICS still is
all over the place, but because computers have
become so inexpensive over the years,
we start to see something called
distributed computer systems, or DCS.
A DCS is simply an extension of ICS.
In this case we're gonna have one, two, three,
four different processes.
These machines look the same, but they could be
four stages in a process, or whatever it might be.
You can see each stage of this process would have
its own ICS server, but a lot of times we could just,
because of the power of computers, we could have
one ICS server that is handling
a distributed number of systems like this.
So not only do we have that, but in a true DCS,
you're gonna have a hierarchy of ICS systems.
This main single box that you're seeing right here,
he could make adjustments to other boxes based on
things that are happening upstream
or downstream in the process.
And of course you're still going to have
some type of interface that the humans themselves
have to look at in order to do what they do.
These are the base pieces for
an industrial control system,
but there's a lot more than that.
First of all, when we're talking about an ICS
or a DCS, we're usually talking about a process
that takes place at one physical location.
In my case, it was at the cheese plant,
or at the place that builds microwave ovens.
Whatever it might be, it is physically one area.
It's something where human beings can
get to quickly if something goes wrong.
But there's another form of ICS called SCADA.
SCADA is a bit different; it's still ICS,
it's still industrial control systems,
but it's designed for long-distance things like
oil field pipelines, or railroads, or things like that
where you've got electrical transmission.
Things where you've got a lot of distance.
In this case, the ICS controllers themselves
have to be a little bit more autonomous.
They have to be more ready to take care of something
because it might take a while for people to get there.
Otherwise it's basically the same system.
Understanding that, let's go back and now talk about
some of the pieces both of ICS and of SCADA.
Before we start talking about SCADA,
let's talk about a little bit more on ICS/DCS.
Here's my DCS system; it could also be an ICS system.
But in particular, I wanna talk about
these two parts right here.
First of all, the actual ICS server itself
is usually a device called
a programmable logic controller, or a PLC.
PLCs are PCs, and they've got CPU and RAM
and storage and everything.
They're usually headless; they don't have keyboards
or monitors connected to them.
They even have their own specific operating systems.
You'll hear things like embedded Linux,
or embedded Windows, or VxWorks.
All these very specific operating systems
that are unique for PLCs.
But the bottom line is, they're still really computers.
On the interface itself, usually what we're
talking about here is something called
a human machine interface, or an HMI.
Granted, this is also a computer (laughs),
but we don't really want our plant operators
to be playing Solitaire while they're working.
These are very specific screens that have
a very specific interface that is
unique to the process that's being monitored.
Here's a great example of that right here.
Let's talk about SCADA.
SCADA stands for Supervisory Control
and Data Acquisition System.
SCADA really is ICS, but it's got one part that
you don't typically see when you're
looking at a typical ICS system,
and that is the remote terminal unit.
This is an example of a remote terminal unit.
Actually it's more than just a remote terminal unit
because it really is a PLC.
But it's a extra powerful PLC that's
designed to be more autonomous.
It gathers more data, it's designed to
run on its own a little bit.
So there's some parts in here.
Like, for example, these are sensory tools
that are tracking whatever happens to be doing.
Then we're going to have some type of interface.
A lot of times, RTUs will have keyboards and mice,
simply because if somebody has to get on
a helicopter and get to this place,
they wanna be able to access it quickly.
And then last is the actual RTU itself that's
doing all the hard work.
And that, my friends, is the absolute (laughs)
rock-bottom basics for SCADA/ICS.
The Network+ isn't gonna test you too hard.
We've pretty much covered everything
you're gonna be running into.
But I wanna put a little side note in here.
ICS is an amazing career opportunity.
I know zillions of guys who are really good at
being able to make all this stuff work.
It's a great career area; people do it all the time.
And who knows; maybe one day,
you, too, can make some cheese.