Remote access to PLC...

cardosocea said:

Why do I get the feeling this thread is going to descend into IT bashing?? LOL

Click to expand...

Well. I have to say it works both ways and today I have been reminded of the critical importance of not cross connecting machine networks and factory networks.

I arrived in the office this morning to find that nobody could access anyhting on the network or the internet. All computers were getting duff DHCP infomation from somewhere. Late yesterday someone connected our office network into the switch of a large machine on test in the factory. As it happens, that wasn't the source of our woes today but it very easily could have been.

Other potential problems with connecting machines directly include: Viruses, address conflicts, excess broadcast traffic, hacking (accidental or malicious). Can you imagine what operators might do on the night shift when they discover that the SCADA can access the internet?

In short: USE A VPN GATEWAY

there is a VERY good reason, as mentioned a virus.
I was part of the it team, we were all engineers. the company rule was any laptop that went offsite was to be scanned by me before connecting to the plant network. someone violated that rule and connected to the management network, then the plant network. it was a cornficker virus. it ran once an hour to find all pc's. then every 30min,15min, 10 min, 5 min,1 minute. the plant was at an almost standstill. it took (4) 18 hour days for four of us to get rid of it! since then, i have confiscated the plant managers, HR, training, and engineering managers pc and all jump drives. returned all except the engineering managers stuff. we could not remove it, so i destroyed them per the bosses approval. he was not a happy camper, called my boss and was told too bad.
250 pc's and laptops, 12 servers, 6 backup servers, 4 offsite platforms.
we had to go to each system multiple times.
i NEVER want to go through that again !
james