> All that industrial control stuff with MODBUS and SCADA and other brain damage: it has even less security than the IoT junk, i.e. none!
Right... because industrial automation networks should never be connected to publicly accessible networks without security in between. PLC's and sensors don't need internet or intranet access so why would you connect them?
The problem is Industrial engineers aren't IT or security experts and that's why we have security issues. Plus they're under constant pressure to get production running and meeting deadlines. Next you'll say "but what about stuxnet! that proved that even air gapping isn't secure enough!" Yup. It also proves that using insecure general purpose operating systems (hint, windows) is stupid as well. But it's cheap and familiar so here we are. The problem isn't with the protocols or hardware, it's ignorance with a side of laziness topped with corner cutting.
Also many industrial protocols don't run over tcp but instead use raw ethernet packets and have dedicated protocol processors running to keep latencies down to microsecond levels for flipping IO bits. An example is Beckhoff's EtherCAT. So security does not apply to those networks and would be difficult to implement.
> Bad as home automation is, it is, incredibly, better than your run of the mill industrial automation!
Apples to oranges.
We recently bought a machine which has an internal automation network between a Siemens 840d, a Siemens safety PLC and a DSP controller from Adwin. Real time communications is over Profibus and CANopen. between that machine and the rest of the world sits a humble PC Engines box running a custom FreeBSD image that gives them secure remote access to the machine. I'd trust that more than any home automation built on webshit.