Will we ever learn?

In preparing for two webinars I held this week, I ran across two items that just make you hold your breath. The first was an advertisement for an on-line process controller for water treatment. It stated: “The result is the ability to remotely monitor and control your process from any computer, anywhere in the world, with just a standard web browser.” The second item was from the Australian SCADAlistserver: “Hello to all, I have RS Studio SE stand alone. I forget the password of Factory talk directory. Its Rockwell Software for Allen-Bradley products. Kindely help. How to recover the Factory Talk password or how to remove. I dont want to Formet my Workstation.” Suffice it to say, his prayers were answered (if they really were prayers) when someone supplied the password on the listserver for all to see. These are on top of the two recent security breaches at San Jose Water and Luminant. I should be amazed, but I’m not. Joe Weiss