Could your Building Catch a Virus? Measuring the Impact of Cyber Security Threats on Building Management Systems

The close control of building services is seen as essential component for delivering low energy performance. This inevitably means some form of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. To increase the penetration of this technology into the market place, it is inevitable that internet communication will be employed increasingly in the future. However, it can be very challenging to ensure that a widely dispersed monitoring network is secure from cyber attacks. Tools are readily available on the Web that can challenge the Building management Systems (BMS), especially if they are not configured carefully. The nature of these threats is explained. Results are reported using the search engine Shodan. This search engine was able to find the IP address of a controller several thousand miles away through the internet that had been purposefully misconfigured. It is concluded that ensuring a secure system will be a critical component of commissioning any new advanced Building Energy Management system. Without this step the application of intelligent building technology designed to meet challenging energy performance will be limited to low profile projects. In the near future, when BMSs will be integrated into the Smart Grid, poor cyber security of building management systems will pose a threat not only to the building itself, but to a country’s infrastructure as well.