Light SCADA monitoring for manufacturing in Puerto Rico
Basic visibility in industrial environments: logs, anomalies, and alerts without replacing all legacy SCADA.
Plants in Mayagüez, Manatí, and metro industrial zones run legacy SCADA on embedded Windows 7 — unpatched, no centralized logs, nobody watching. CISA warns OT visibility is a defense prerequisite; you do not need to replace all SCADA to start seeing anomalies.
Light monitoring starts with mirror port on OT switch to passive sensor (Nozomi, Claroty lite, or even Zeek on modest hardware). Observe Modbus, DNP3, and anomalous SMB without touching PLCs. NIST SP 800-82 recommends logging at OT/IT boundary — a syslog server in OT DMZ with 90-day retention already improves post-incident review.
Minimum viable alerts: new device on OT network, Modbus write outside production hours, large file transfer from HMI. Tune to reduce noise — a PR plant has no 24/7 OT analyst. Integration with IT SIEM (Sentinel, Wazuh) via forwarder with separate OT rules.
Industrial maintenance vendors request permanent remote access; monitor those sessions as high-risk events. Krebs on Security documents vendors as vectors — recording and MFA on jump host is not paranoia.
Caribbean manufacturing competes on export; OT incident downtime affects continental orders. Light SCADA monitoring costs less than one hour of line stoppage. Start with one pilot line, document normal traffic baseline, and scale when operations trust alerts.
Operations and execution — connecting strategy with what the team ships every week.
