Patch management for SCADA in SCADA systems - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Patch Management for SCADA

📖 Scenario: You work in a control center managing a SCADA system that controls water treatment plants. Keeping the system secure means regularly applying patches to devices. You will create a simple program to track which devices need patches and apply them step-by-step.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that stores SCADA devices and their patch status, sets a patch threshold, identifies devices needing patches, and prints the list of devices to patch.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called devices with device names as keys and their patch age in days as values

Create a variable called patch_threshold set to 30 days

Use a for loop with variables device and days to find devices with patch age greater than patch_threshold

Create a list called devices_to_patch containing device names needing patches

Print the devices_to_patch list

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

SCADA systems control critical infrastructure like water plants and power grids. Keeping devices patched prevents security risks and system failures.

💼 Career

Understanding patch management helps DevOps and system engineers maintain secure and reliable industrial control systems.

1

Create the SCADA devices dictionary

Create a dictionary called devices with these exact entries: 'Pump1': 45, 'Valve2': 10, 'Sensor3': 60, 'Controller4': 20

SCADA systems

# Create the devices dictionary with patch ages
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create the dictionary with device names as keys and patch ages as values.

2

Set the patch threshold

Create a variable called patch_threshold and set it to 30 to represent days

SCADA systems

devices = {'Pump1': 45, 'Valve2': 10, 'Sensor3': 60, 'Controller4': 20}
# Set patch_threshold to 30 days
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 30 to the variable patch_threshold.

3

Find devices needing patches

Create an empty list called devices_to_patch. Use a for loop with variables device and days to iterate over devices.items(). Inside the loop, if days is greater than patch_threshold, append device to devices_to_patch

SCADA systems

devices = {'Pump1': 45, 'Valve2': 10, 'Sensor3': 60, 'Controller4': 20}
patch_threshold = 30
# Create devices_to_patch list and find devices needing patches
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to create an empty list first. Then loop over the dictionary items and check if patch age is greater than the threshold.

4

Print devices that need patching

Write a print statement to display the devices_to_patch list

SCADA systems

devices = {'Pump1': 45, 'Valve2': 10, 'Sensor3': 60, 'Controller4': 20}
patch_threshold = 30
devices_to_patch = []
for device, days in devices.items():
    if days > patch_threshold:
        devices_to_patch.append(device)
# Print the devices_to_patch list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(devices_to_patch) to show the list of devices needing patches.