[Drill Thrawl]

Do they not have battery back ups and generators in their data centers?

[LurkedLongEnough]

Wiki: "There are two distinct threats to a modern SCADA system. First is the threat of unauthorized access to the control software, whether it be human access or changes induced intentionally or accidentally by virus infections and other software threats residing on the control host machine. Second is the threat of packet access to the network segments hosting SCADA devices.

In many cases, there is rudimentary or no security on the actual packet control protocol, so anyone who can send packets to the SCADA device can control it.

In many cases SCADA users assume that a VPN is sufficient protection and are unaware that physical access to SCADA-related network jacks and switches provides the ability to totally bypass all security on the control software and fully control those SCADA networks.

These kinds of physical access attacks bypass firewall and VPN security and are best addressed by endpoint-to-endpoint authentication and authorization such as are commonly provided in the non-SCADA world by in-device SSL or other cryptographic techniques."