[SCADASEC] Fw: Introduction

[Bob Radvanovsky]

Re-posted from Jake's introduction from the Australian SCADA list...

-rad

----- Original Message -----
From: Jake Brodsky [mailto:ab3a at comcast.net]
To: Bob Radvanovsky [mailto:rsradvan at unixworks.net]
Subject: Introduction


> I am a registered controls engineer for a large water and sewer utility 
> in the State of Maryland.  It is known as the Washington Suburban 
> Sanitary Commission.  We serve the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC. 
> I've been working on various generations and facets of SCADA for more 
> than 20 years.  (After that length of time, a few extra years either way 
> is almost irrelevant)
> 
> I was educated in many ways:  My formal degree is in Electrical 
> Engineering, but the real education has come from my activities as an 
> amateur ("ham") radio licensee.  That explains my e-mail address.  It's 
> my call sign.  I've also been involved with computers, particularly 
> embedded computers, since I was in high school back in the late 70s and 
> early 80s.
> 
> I got started as a radio technician, servicing two way radios for cab 
> companies and garbage trucks.  I later worked my way through school as a 
> microwave filter bench technician, and later as a telecommunications 
> technician.  And then, just before I was about to graduate in 1988, my 
> bosses saw something they liked in me.
> 
> Out of laziness, I had been setting up automatic controls to survey the 
> various channels of our FDM analog microwave network and studying where 
> we stood in the dynamic range bucket so as to minimize noise (those of 
> you with analog microwave background may understand this, but it's hard 
> to explain to those who know only digital gear).  This little bit of 
> extra-curricular activity got my bosses to offer me a job.  It didn't 
> pay as well as the aerospace industry that I had hoped to join some day, 
> but it was steady work, and that was right about the time when all those 
> major defense contracts from the cold war began to dry up.  I stayed.
> 
> I got started on the ground floor of my company's effort to automate 
> more complex processes.  I contributed to the design and construction of 
> DCS systems for many plants and I did system programming for our SCADA 
> system.  Today, I'm one of a staff of ten who work in what is known as 
> our Process Control Group.  We're a sort of in-house integration firm 
> for all SCADA and DCS systems in our company.
> 
> This group includes people with backgrounds in IT, Civil engineering, 
> Electrical engineering, Master Electricians with high voltage 
> certifications, Certified Instrumentation techncians, Telecommunications 
> Engineers, and more.  We do all the integration, installation, and 
> repairs in-house.  We live with our creations, so we feel that we have a 
>   more honest view of the entire process.  After all, if things don't 
> work, the operators know all our phone numbers, and they won't be shy 
> about calling us.
> 
> In our latest generation of SCADA upgrades, I got involved with an 
> interesting problem involving the DNP protocol.  After the whole thing 
> was resolved, I was invited to join the DNP Technical Committee.  I am 
> not so experienced, next to some of those folk who can almost quote the 
> eight volumes of DNP documentation from memory, but I'm working on it.
> 
> I'm also a lurker and occasional participant on ISA-99, the ICS security 
> standards group.
> 
> I'm interested in meeting with other water and sewer utility SCADA users 
> for discussion of a bottoms up approach to SCADA and DCS security.   If 
> there are any of you reading this, please contact me offline.
> 
> My non-technical activities include brewing beer, piloting airplanes, 
> and tinkering with my ham radio gear (but not all at the same time).
>