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Comment by symfrog

8 hours ago

which reasons?

Remote monitoring is one of them presumably

  • But is it completely impossible to separate the monitoring and equipment/management?

    Stupid example like the equipment itself is not networked, but you could watch via a webcam and/or get metrics via image recognition.

    Maybe it's safer just to have somebody work the night shift.

    • No, and it's not strictly impossible to correctly build out a SOC / SIEM and ingest all the logs you want and pay for the right engineers to make sure it all works correctly. But damned if anyone manages to do a great job in this area. It's too complex and too expensive, so almost everyone settles for "best effort."

      A lot of problems are easy conceptually, but we can't manage to tackle them.

In addition to remote monitoring, central control over large systems clearly has benefits: quickly and automatically spinning up a power generation in one location in response to an outage or just increased demand in another one, or conversely spooling down generation in response to a large demand spike going away (many factories need to notify the grid before starting up or shutting down), shutting down water/gas flow upstream of a detected leak, or yes, working from home, which lots of people here regularly argue is a good thing.

You could absolutely make the case that it isn't worth the risk, but that isn't the same as not having benefits.