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A comment on Hackers destroy water pump via SCADA abuse. Parent comment

Re:Hackers destroy water pump via SCADA abuse by yew on Friday November 18, 2011 @08:23PM (#3254271)
That depends on how the cost-benefit analysis came out. You did do a cost-benefit analysis, right?

Personally, I would consider connecting critical infrastructure to the Internet without taking adequate security measures to be the criminally irresponsible thing. Of course, water pumps aren't really "critical infrastructure" in the same sense as, say, nuclear power plants. Hopefully their security is a little more reasonable.

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Re:Hackers destroy water pump via SCADA abuse by eigenvector on Friday November 18, 2011 @11:08PM (#3254538)
Cost-benefit what?

I work for one of the largest municipal electric utilities in North America. We are a monopoly and do not set our own rates. There is no such thing as "cost-benefit" for us. We spend as much money as we need to get the reliability our regulator demands, and then our rates are set accordingly for us to recover those costs.

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