Technique for Migration to IPV6 for a Secure SCADA Architecture

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems refer to industrial control systems (ICS): computer systems that monitor and control industrial, infrastructure, or facility-based processes. The tremendous increase in the number of network connections to the SCADA systems has made the network more susceptible to attacks by hackers. The vendors of SCADA and control products have been addressing the issues related to the security threats posed for the existing SCADA systems. The IP addressing scheme that is presently used is IPV4 and the number of addresses have almost come to an exhaustion stage and this demands the need for implementation of IPV6 throughout the world. The IPV6 has more security features and it supports almost any platform of operating system. In addition the IPV6 address has a length of 128 bits and it is possible to generate about 3.4×10 38 addresses. In this paper, the migration to IPV6 for the security of SCADA systems has been proposed. Index terms—IPV4, IPV6, Migration, SCADA