Three systems that all "collect plant data" but answer different questions. Boundaries, handoffs, and how to stop buying two of them for one job.
SCADA
Supervisory control, historians, alarming, and operations visualization.
How to divide a plant network into zones, control what crosses between them, and why flat OT networks keep making incident reports.
What distributed control is, how the two ABB flagships differ, and when a DCS beats a PLC/SCADA stack.
IndexISA standards: ISA-95, ISA-88, ISA/IEC 62443 (isa.org)
ISA's standards library, including ISA-95/IEC 62264 (enterprise–control integration), ISA-88 (batch), and ISA/IEC 62443 (OT security).
IndexNIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3: Guide to OT Security (csrc.nist.gov)
NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3: the current federal guide to OT security — architecture, risk assessment, controls, and incident response for ICS.
IndexAutomation.com — news and resources (automation.com)
Automation.com: industrial automation news, tutorials, and vendor coverage from the ISA-affiliated publication.
IndexThe Automation Blog — PLC & HMI tutorials (theautomationblog.com)
Shawn Tierney's long-running PLC and HMI tutorial site: reviews, training, and plain-spoken controls commentary.
Terms in this topic
- Historian
- Long-term high-resolution store for process time-series data.
- HMI
- Operator interface for monitoring and controlling equipment.
- RTU
- Rugged controller for distributed infrastructure assets.
- SCADA
- Live supervision, alarming, and operator control.