POS is being used in this context to mean any player operated structure, which station is a subset of. The distinction is important because not all POS devices should be handled the same. Something like a remote surveillance node is a deployable device, and not really a POS, but it could report to a communication station, which would be a POS.
Why that is important is deployable devices should be reasonably cheap in comparision to a POS and be expected to be lost on a regular basis, while losing a POS would be significant. Because this is the forums, I'll clarify cheap deployable device as about 20 Million NIC and up to 100 M, where POS's would be Billions of NIC.
Something like a POS should not require 24/7 guarding, meaning there are measures in place that prevent it from being destroyed quickly, it should never be indestructable though. In comparision, the deployable device could have offensive or defensive protection, but is designed to only 'hold out' for a short time before being destroyed.
The reason is, if expensive POS devices are vulnerable to off-peak destruction, the benefit to building one would have to be OP to warrent the risk of owning one. To be clear, making a billion dollar investment in something that could be destroyed the next day wouldn't be worth the effort unless even one day of operation would pay it back, and then if it stayed in operation it would be too much advantage.
Something like the panel would be a perfect compliment to the expensive POS, alerting online members to the status of the structure. Requiring a POS to be used in conjunction with deployable objects to get remote status would allow the system to be compromised without losing the expensive POS and making it not worth building.
Just a thought, the remote survallence unit would actually lock the tiles in its target range to monitor what ever is there, be it plant or structure. The cost of the deployable object would go up to get more range and more max lockable targets; or they could be enchanced by extensions of the player deploying them.