Exemplary embodiments provide separate SA system-level functionalities or tasks, which are conventionally performed by a multitude of distinct station-level devices, through a single SA device having a plurality of Processing Units (PU). The latter are either distinct Central Processing Units (CPUs) mounted on the same processor board, or distinct processing cores of a single multi-core CPU sharing the same Random Access Memory (RAM). Virtualization techniques are used in supporting multiple instances of Operating Systems (OS) on the plurality of PUs, to create distinct and mutually isolated execution environments are created. Each of these execution environments hosts a single functionality out of a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) functionality, a gateway functionality, an engineering workplace functionality, and a firewall functionality.