Connect Your Equipment to the Internet?

No, Internet security is not at a point where connecting production machinery to the Internet is safe. I doubt it ever will be. What happens when there is a power failure in some off-premises server and one loses contact with the equipment? If all facilities are in house, one at least knows when communications goes down...

It is definitely attractive in the water industry. Supervisory control and data acquisition or SCADA systems have been used in water and waste water control for many years. It is particularly useful in monitoring water quality and trends. We have used such systems in remote water treatment operations (Canada) with great success. It cuts out the daily labour of monitoring and makes remote adjustments possible. Larger urban centers can also benefit from SCADA operations. Problems can be pinpointed and often corrected saving lots of labour overtime. Reports are generated very quickly.

How safe from hackers are they? I suspect most are reasonably protected and updated with passwords frequently. Our operations have never been hacked but that is not to say they can't be hacked. If they are hacked and someone changes a parameter alarms will sound and rouse a remote operator. It is a risk v benefit problem.