What is SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) Integration?

SCADA systems control and monitor industrial processes, manufacturing lines, power grids, water treatment plants, oil refineries. They collect data from sensors and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) on the factory floor, process it in real-time, and display it to operators via Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs). The integration challenge is connecting these operational technology (OT) systems to modern cloud software (IT). The two worlds speak different protocols: SCADA uses Modbus, OPC-UA, and BACnet; cloud software uses REST, GraphQL, and WebSockets. The integration architecture requires three components. An Edge Gateway (typically a ruggedized Linux device on the factory floor) that speaks OPC-UA to the PLCs and translates telemetry data into JSON payloads. A Secure Transport Layer that transmits this data to the cloud via MQTT or AMQP, using TLS encryption and certificate-based authentication to prevent industrial espionage. A Cloud Processing Layer that ingests the telemetry stream, stores it in a time-series database (TimescaleDB on PostgreSQL), and feeds it into predictive maintenance ML models that detect anomalies before equipment fails. The security implications are severe: a compromised SCADA system can cause physical damage (Stuxnet demonstrated this). Air-gapping the OT network from the IT network with a one-way data diode is a common security pattern.