Skill-style-support Analytics
Prof. Pearson thinks that the workforce involved in digital innovations are expected to develop different types of skills in technical (Computer science, Information technology, MIS), research and development, knowledge management, system design and project management. It is essential to teach the aforesaid technologies in various programmes of computer science, BCA, MCA, Electrical and Electronics engineering, information and communication technology as part of graduation, post graduation and Doctoral programmes. The learning community should be involved in consulting, projects and research assignments. They need good resources such as books, journals, software and experimental set up. However, they should understand the motivation of the problems and various issues of technology management through deep analytics. The workforce can develop skills through effective knowledge management programmes and resources which support creation, storage, sharing and application of knowledge. The diffusion of technology requires the support of intelligent leadership style; the leaders must be able to tackle the complexity, pace and novelty of R&D projects through efficient project management, organization structure development, knowledge management and collaborative and cooperative work culture. The leaders are expected to be people, information and action oriented. The emerging digital technologies also demand efficient leadership style in terms of optimal resource allocation and utilization, collaboration, coordination and communication.
Next, let us focus on support. The emerging digital technologies should be operated by a pool of intelligent, educated, efficient, productive, committed and motivated HR workforce. Active involvement, knowledge sharing and optimal human talent utilization is essential for the diffusion of new technology. New skill should be developed in digital, information and communication technologies. The business model requires the support of a good human resource management system for talent acquisition, talent retention, skill development, training, career growth planning, incentive, reward, recognition and payment function. The workforce should develop different types of skills such as research and development, system design, project management, testing, commissioning and system maintenance. The system administrators must have leadership skill in terms of smart thinking, communication, coordination and change management. The workforce can develop skills through effective knowledge management programmes.
What should be the innovation model for emerging digital technology? Is it possible to adopt K-A-B-C-D-E-T-F model? Knowledge managers should arrange various types of events such as workshops, seminars and conferences so that the innovators can acquire the basic and fundamental concept. The activators should initiate the innovation process by identifying a set of good research problems through scope analysis. Random selection of research problem should be avoided by evaluating the strength, experience and skill of the innovators. The research problem should have potential business intelligence and social benefits. The browsers should search for information; investigate throughout the process and find relevant data or information to start innovation. The creators should analyze the gap and think of to-be system; generate new ideas, concepts and possibilities and search for new solutions. The developers should transform the ideas of the creation phase into good solutions; turn the ideas into deliverables, products and services. They should collaborate with different research forums, industries and experts during this phase. The executors should implement and execute the roadmap of the innovation. The testers should do various types of experiments and laboratory works; verify system dynamics and monitor the performance of the deliverables. Advanced research laboratories are required for complicated testing and experiments. The facilitators should define project plan, corporate governance policy, marketing plan, production plan, investment plan and cost-benefit analysis. They should be able to identify the revenue and profit making stream and fair, rational business intelligence. The government should provide financial assistance to the innovators in patent registration.
The expert panel are discussing on skill-style-support for the innovation of solar computing,, IIOT, SCADA and ICS; they are expected to develop different types of skills in technical (e.g. smart grid, solar computing), research and development, knowledge management, system design and project management. It is essential to teach smart grid technology in various programmes of Electrical and Electronics engineering and information and communication technology as part of graduation, post graduation and Doctoral programmes. The learning community should be involved in consulting, projects and research assignments. They need good resources such as books, journals, software and experimental set up. However, they should understand the motivation of the problems and various issues of technology management through deep analytics. The workforce can develop skills through effective knowledge management programmes and resources which support creation, storage, sharing and application of knowledge. The diffusion of technology requires the support of intelligent leadership style; the leaders must be able to tackle the complexity, pace and novelty of R&D projects through efficient project management, organization structure development, knowledge management and collaborative and cooperative work culture. The leaders are expected to be people, information and action oriented. Smart grid technology demands efficient leadership style in terms of optimal resource allocation and utilization, collaboration, coordination and communication.
It is essential to focus on cause-effects analysis of various unwanted occurrences which may affect individuals, system, organization, critical infrastructure, services, environment or the society. It may be possible that the design of old power grid had not considered the issues of information and cyber security and secure and robust protocols correctly due to specialized hardware and technical skill, proprietary code, protocol standards and operation in closed environment. But, today, the system may be connected to the internet directly or indirectly and controlled by human machine interface. There are other organizational factors such as lack of understanding of the cyber security at the levels of executives and chief information security officers, accountability, lack of proper training and ICT security standards and cultural difference between IT and power grid departments. The primary focus of the power grid department may be efficiency and safety of operation and process control and less focus on IT and cyber security. Further, there are threats from the perspectives of system architecture, old technology, system design, operation, maintenance and inefficient protocols.
Next, let us focus on support. The system is expected to be resilient. The resiliency measures the ability to and the speed at which it can return to normal performance level following a disruption. Real-time security management involves high cost of computation and communication. The vulnerability of the power grid to a disruptive event should be viewed as a combination of likelihood of a disruption and its potential severity. The system administrator must do two critical tasks: assess risks and mitigate the assessed risks. To assess risks, the system administrator should explore basic security intelligence: what can go wrong in grid operation? what is the probability of the disruption? how severe it will be? what are the consequences if the disruption occurs?
The smart grid should be operated by a pool of intelligent, educated, efficient, productive, committed and motivated HR workforce. Active involvement, knowledge sharing and optimal human talent utilization is essential for the diffusion of the new technology related to smart grid. New skill should be developed in erection, testing, commissioning, operations, maintenance and trading of smart power grid. The business model requires the support of a good human resource management system for talent acquisition, talent retention, skill development, training, career growth planning, incentive, reward, recognition and payment function. The workforce should develop different types of skills such as research and development, system design, project management, erection, testing, commissioning and service maintenance. The system administrators must have leadership skill in terms of smart thinking, communication, coordination and change management. The workforce can develop skills through effective knowledge management programmes.
ICS / SCADA operation demands efficient leadership style in terms of optimal resource (5M : man, machine, materials, method, money) allocation and utilization, collaboration and coordination, communication, project management and predictive analytics for analytical and logical reasoning; a set of specific skill set in system administration, technology management, operations management, ERP, SCM, strategic and financial management. It is essential to consider various organizational and human factors such as user awareness of IT and cyber security and overall ICS / SCADA security, transparency in operation and maintenance policies and procedures, threats from disgruntled employees and hackers, weak password protection (e.g. password strength and expiration time), malware protection and external threats in ICS environment (e.g. unauthorized access of ICS / SCADA components).
It is essential to focus on cause-effects analysis of various unwanted occurrences which may affect individuals, system, organization, critical infrastructure, services, environment or the society. It may be possible that the design of old ICS / SCADA technology had not considered the issues of information and cyber security and secure and robust ICS protocols correctly due to specialized hardware and technical skill, proprietary code, protocol standards and operation in closed environment. But, today the system may be connected to the internet directly or indirectly and controlled by HMI interface. There are other organizational factors such as lack of understanding of the cyber security at the levels of executives and chief information security officers, accountability, lack of proper training and ICT security standards and cultural difference between IT and ICS departments. The primary focus of ICS department may be efficiency and safety of operation and process control and less focus on IT and cyber security. Further, there are threats from the perspectives of system architecture, old technology, system design, operation and maintenance and inefficient protocols.
Next, let us focus on support. The system is expected to be resilient. Resiliency measures the ability to and the speed at which it can return to normal performance level following a disruption. Real-time security management involves high cost of computation and communication. The vulnerability of ICS to a disruptive event should be viewed as a combination of likelihood of a disruption and its potential severity. The system administrator must do two critical tasks: assess risks and mitigate the assessed risks. To assess risks, the system administrator should explore basic security intelligence: what can go wrong in ICS operation? what is the probability of the disruption? how severe it will be? what are the consequences if the disruption occurs? A system vulnerability map can be modeled through a set of expected risk metrics, probability of disruptive event and the magnitude of consequences. For example, the map may have four quadrants in a two dimensional space; the vertical axis represents the probability of disruptive event and the horizontal axis represents the magnitude of the consequences.
The system administrator faces a set of challenges to solve the problem of resiliency: what are the critical issues to be focused on? what can be done to reduce the probability of a disruption? what can be done to reduce the impact of a disruption? How to improve the resiliency of the system? The critical steps of risk assessment are to identify a set of feasible risk metrics; assess the probability of each risk metric; assess severity of each risk metric and plot each risk metric in system vulnerability map. The critical steps of risk mitigation are to prioritize risks; do causal analysis for each risk metric; develop specific strategies for each cell of vulnerability map and be adaptive and do real-time system monitoring.
SCADA is a good solution of resilient, smart and intelligent energy grid. An operationally secure power system is one with low probability of system black out or collapse. If the process of cascading failures continues, the system as a whole or its major parts may completely collapse. It is known as system blackout. This problem can be solved through security constrained power system optimization: system monitoring, contingency analysis and corrective action analysis. The contingency analysis is basically computerized simulation technique: it checks line flow limit violation and bus voltage limit violation by simulating each unit and line outage of the power system model. If it finds any violation, it gives alarm. The blackout problem is related to transient stability; it can be solved by fast short circuit clearing, powerful excitation systems and stability control techniques. Voltage stability is another reason of power system collapse. It is concerned with the ability of a power system to maintain acceptable voltages at all buses in the system under normal conditions and after being subjected to a disturbance. Inadequate reactive power support from generators and transmission lines leads to voltage instability or voltage collapse. Voltage collapse leads to unacceptable voltage instability in a specific zone. This risk can be mitigated by raising generator voltage, generator transformer tap value, reactive compensation by using shunt capacitors, static VAR system and synchronous condensers, OLTC adjustment and strategic load shedding. Disaster management plan for a resilient SCADA system is concerned with miscellaneous issues - a set of coordination mechanisms and intelligent priority based resource allocation strategies, organizing disaster management task force during disruption, assessing the expected vulnerabilities approximately, reducing the likelihood of disruptions, collaborative planning for security, building in redundancies i.e. alternative stand-by or back-up system, designing a resilient system and rational investment in training and corporate culture. The SCADA system administrator should develop a business continuity plan for resilience. Collaboration is a strategic tool for developing comprehensive standards of security and safety measures for SCADA system. This is an initiative among all the stakeholders of SCADA system in order to improve the security standards through jointly managed planning, process and shared information.
A special well-trained taskforce should be ready for disaster management during disruption of SCADA system. The first challenge is to detect the root cause of disruption quickly and recognize. The system administrator should isolate the abnormal process or system components from the normal one. Security and safety measures should be layered. Properly layered security measures woven together can reduce the probability of disruption of a complex system where a single security move may not be adequate to provide adequate security. During disruption, a SCADA system may be isolated from the power grid through a set of protection relays. In fact, a system requires preventive maintenance on periodic basis. The maintenance plan and shut down schedule should be published to the public in advance. In case of transient disaster, the public should be alerted in time to avoid the sudden uncertainties. In manufacturing domain, a steel / cement / automotive plant should be shut down for periodic maintenance or production capacity control adaptively; soft start is essential for intentional disruption of continuous production system.
The SCADA system administrator should identify all connections to SCADA network; disconnect unnecessary connections; evaluate and strengthen the security of any remaining connections to the SCADA network; avoid unnecessary services; should not only rely on traditional security protocols; select appropriate vendors and consultants and implement the optimal set of security features; establish strong controls over any medium that is used as a backdoor into the SCADA network; implement intruder detection system; perform technical audits of SCADA network and the associated applications and should conduct physical surveys of all the remote sites connected with SCADA network regularly. The system administrator should identify and evaluate possible attack scenarios; define the role of security and disaster management workforce clearly; document the IT architecture of the security system of SCADA network; define a risk assessment and risk mitigation strategy; determine the basic security requirement of SCADA system; establish effective configuration management process; conduct self-assessments and establish system back-up and disaster recovery plan. Security workforce plays an important role to control various types of chaotic situation near SCADA system. Finally, the security reengineering team of SCADA system requires the commitment and support of the leaders and senior management for proper communication of the security policy (e.g. access control, information disclosure), user training and implementation of SCADA security system. Much of the current SCADA system is outdated, unreliable and insecure having high maintenance cost. New capabilities can enhance efficiency and reliability but also create various types of vulnerabilities. The reengineering of SCADA system should focus on distributed computational intelligence, broadband communication capabilities and robust security infrastructure.
Let us explore skill-style-support necessary for the innovation of secure multi-party quantum computing. The workforce involved in innovation of quantum compouting are expected to develop different types of skills in Physics, Computer Science, research and development and knowledge management. The next issue is skill-style-support necessary for the innovation of secure adaptive filter. The workforce involved in innovation of secure adaptive filter are expected to develop different types of skills in Computer Science (e.g. Data Structure, Secure Multi- party Computation), communication technology, research and development and knowledge management. The diffusion of the new technological innovation depends on the skills and capabilities of new start ups and research laboratories globally. The system administrators must have leadership skills in smart thinking, communication, coordination and change management. The workforce should develop skills through effective knowledge management programmes. An effective knowledge management system should support creation, storage, sharing and application of knowledge in a transparent, collaborative and innovative way. The diffusion of secure multi-party quantum computing technology needs the support of great leadership style; The style is basically the quality of leadership; great leaders must have passion, motivation, commitment, support, coordination, integration and excellent communication skill. What should be the innovation model for effective diffusion of quantum computing technology? Is it possible to adopt K-A-B-C-D-E- T-F model?