Yes, there should be a much isolation as possible, but going w/o
access to the internet...
Do you think it would be a good idea to have the ppl go back to control by radio? That was one of the ways it “used” to be done.
This isn’t the 30s or 50s, or even the 80s.
How else are you going to connect 100s or even 1000s of miles of pipe and more importantly valves, sensors, and timing devices together to coordinate the different products and tanks that’s running through the system? Don’t forget the important systems like leak and theft detection.
Yes, they could have dedicated fiber optic running along the RoW, but almost none are handled that way. I know of a few that are, but these are definitely outliers.
Carriers today handle multiple products in the same line, with much less transmix than ever before. Running manual is a very risky proposition, too many high likelihood, high consequence scenarios too allow for anything real duration.
Wouldn’t need optical fiber if you could do line-of-sight IR laser TX/RX.
Microwave would surmount low/no visibility scenarios
There is radio, like way back when, but now with modern frequency-hopping to prevent eavesdeoppers.
Could even do 256-bit encrypted packets over shortwave.
A step down would be to set the whole thing up as part of the company domain and permit acess ONLY via VPN. Any connecting computer becomes a point of failure, tho, so the only way to safe that system is to have the connecting computers be something like custom configured Chromebooks that have no normal browser installed, are managed from within the domain, and can’t connect to any other domain. Use of an RSA key as part of a multi-factor login would be a given.
I favor pseudo-random frequency-hopping, encrypted packet radio, myself, and no control points outside secured work sites.