Even so, flaws such as this highlight the fundamental security problems that exist in systems running critical infrastructure equipment and networks, he said.

This is the second security vulnerability in RuggedCom's products in just the past few months, Peterson noted. "They had a terrible response last time, so it will be interesting to see if they do better with this one," he said. In addition to fixing the issue, RuggedCom also needs to offer an explanation to customers about how it plans on changing its software development and testing processes to ensure such problems don't continue, he said.

have been gaining attention from security researchers in recent years -- especially after Stuxnet. In the past two years, the number of flaws discovered in ICS and SCADA systems has gone up by nearly 400% Peterson said.

The heightened attention is pushing vendors to address security issues more aggressively. However, a lot of vendors still don't act until someone publicly discloses a flaw in their products, he added.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .