Develop an Industrial SCADA firewall prototype using single board computer

Abstract

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are often used for controlling and monitoring critical infrastructures in various industries. During the implementation phase of the SCADA system, constructing an efficient system was important. As a result, ignoring the importance of having a secure system. Using an external firewall could provide a more secure environment for the system. The purpose of the project is to develop an industrial firewall prototype using a Single Board Computer (SBC). The bypass function of each SBC/device will be familiarized, before transferring the current firewall security features into the most suitable SBC. In addition, simulations are performed in two scenarios. The first scenario is a working SBC and the second scenario is SBC in bypass mode. These two scenarios will be used to test for the functionality of the firewall and performance of the network by network analysing tools like Wireshark, Iperf, and Ncat. The functionality test will be performed by Ncat and Wireshark. Ncat will send packets from the external network to the internal network. The Wireshark will capture the packets and analyse the functionality of the firewall. The results will justify whether the firewall could prevent the access of suspicious packets to the network. For the performance test, network analyzing tools like Iperf and Wireshark will be used. Iperf will generate and transfer packets from external to internal network. The Iperf will generate the results of the throughput. The Wireshark will capture the transmitted packets and examined the latency. These results are useful for proving whether the firewall will affect the performance during network transmission.