The UK's leading cybersecurity agency has published guidance to help organizations make better informed decisions about whether to migrate their supervisory control and data acquisition systems to the cloud.
SCADA is commonplace in cyber-physical systems and especially in critical infrastructure facilities, making it a popular target for attack.
The new guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre aims to show organizations not only the opportunities but also the challenges of migrating such deployments to the cloud.
Migration could offer greater flexibility to adopt new technologies and solutions, as well as improved resilience and scalability, enhancements to remote access, and the centralization of authentication, secrets and key management, the guidance noted.
Organizations must first ensure they have access to the right skills, that they've updated cybersecurity policies and procedures, and they've considered the impact of shared services on security, the NCSC continued.
The guide also provides crucial information to help organizations understand whether their technology is even suitable for migration, and how a cloud solution should be architected for its new environment.
This includes considerations for legacy hardware, software suitability and hybrid connectivity.
Experts welcomed recognition of the potential risks posed by connecting SCADA to the cloud - specifically attacks designed to cause operational downtime in critical infrastructure sectors.
This Cyber News was published on www.infosecurity-magazine.com. Publication date: Tue, 19 Mar 2024 10:15:29 +0000