One of my favorite jobs when I was a young man was
working in a cheese plant. Yeah, 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.
And 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. And 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, and these things have to be
stirred. And there are things watching temperature
and pressure and light and timers and all this
stuff that 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. Now, in order for this to work well,
we need a lot of what are called industrial
controls. Now an industrial control has been
around for since we've had industry 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, and if the
temperature got too low, it would turn on a
burner, you know, stuff like that. Well, 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.
Now the Network+ is going to be covering this
but just on a very light way. So what I want to 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 in the Network+. Now if
we're going to take a look at a typical ICS
system. Now keep in mind, I'm showing you the most
simple one there is here. Okay. Now first of all,
you're gonna have some kind of machine. And yep,
that's the word you're gonna see on Network+
machine. And 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. So the cornerstone of all this is
something called the controller. Now CompTIA is a
little strange on this because what they call
their controller, and make sure you know this for
their test, is they call this an ICS server. So
this is basically a PC, but it's designed
specifically to handle processing. So in order to
do this, it's going to have particular connections
for things like in this example, we have sensors.
Now sensors are going to be stuff like watching
for temperature or watching for the level of fluid
or watching for something happening. And so
sensors are watching for things to take place. The
ICS server is also going to have actuators. Now an
actuator is going to be things like a pump, or
it's going to be a light or it's going to be some
kind of motor, but they basically actuate based on
sensor readings. Now, this system is fairly
autonomous, but you need to be able to monitor. Or
what if we're making chocolate instead of vanilla
or things like that. So the last piece of a simple
ICS system is going to be the interface. Now the
interface is where the human beings talk to the
ICS server so that they can monitor the process if
they want to make changes, any types of
adjustment. Those are the basic pieces. Now, 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
a DCS. Now a DCS is simply an extension of ICS. So
in this case, we're going to have 1, 2, 3, 4 different
processes. Now these machines look the same, but
they could be four stages in a process or whatever
it might be. So you can see each stage in 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 going to have a hierarchy of ICS
systems. So 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. At, 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 and it's something where human beings can get
to quickly have some thing goes wrong. But, there's
another form of ICS called SCADA. Now SCADA is a
bit different. It's still ICS. It's still
industrial control systems. But it's designed for
long distance things like oilfield pipelines or
railroads or things like that, where you've got
electrical transmission, you know, things where
you 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. So understanding that,
let's go back and now talk about some of the
pieces both of ICS and of SCADA. Okay, so before
we start talking about SCADA, let's talk about a
little bit more on ICS slash DCS. So here's my DCS
system, it could also be an ICS system. But in
particular, I want to 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. Now, 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. Now on the interface itself, usually
what we're talking about here is something called
a human machine interface, or an HMI. Now,
granted, this is also a computer, but we don't
really want our plant operators to be playing
Solitaire while they're working. So these have very
specific screens, that have a very specific
interface that is unique to the process that's
been monitored, and here's a great example of that right here.
Okay, let's talk about SCADA. SCADA stands for
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System.
Now, 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, and 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 kind of 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
it 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 want to 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 rock bottom basics for
SCADA slash ICS. Now the Network+ isn't going
to test you too hard. We've pretty much covered
everything you're going to be running into. But I
want to 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.
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