The proliferation of industrial Ethernet today is putting manufacturing at risk for inadvertent and deliberate intrusions. Security measures tailored specifically for production environments are imperative for keeping operations protected – and profitable.
Security today is a necessary part of every manufacturing operation that expects to run smoothly, efficiently, safely and profitably. But protecting the industrial environment is far from an easy job. As production equipment and the systems that connect and control it grow increasingly more complex and sophisticated, the measures needed to protect them become more critical as well.
Fuelling these developments in large part is the recent evolution of Ethernet technology from the office enterprise to the industrial environment. Once thought to be insufficiently robust and lacking in functionality, industrial Ethernet (standardised Ethernet communications over a hardened networking infrastructure) has advanced remarkably, becoming, in a few short years, the communications staple of manufacturing and production, of automation and control.
Although it offers many benefits, industrial Ethernet is not without issues, especially in terms of security. It typically must carry signals between devices on a precise, exacting schedule. While standard Ethernet in the office environment may be unharmed by a signal transmission fault, it is a different story in the industrial world. Networks here must be able to withstand harsh and hazardous environments with little margin for error. Downtime caused by a security breach on the manufacturing side – whether it is from an inadvertent or unintentional error or from a deliberate cyber attack – is always expensive and can put assets at risk.
A changing landscape: the genesis of industrial Ethernet
Before the advent of industrial Ethernet, industrial networks were not as susceptible to cyber security incidents as their enterprise brethren. Security flaws inherent initially in enterprise infrastructures made them prime targets of the cyber underworld. However, relying predominantly on such fieldbus network protocols as Foundation fieldbus, Modbus, or Profibus that used proprietary RS-232 or RS-485 serialised communications, industrial networks were essentially closed with minimal connection to the outside world. They were rarely affected by the network vulnerabilities and attacks that plagued enterprise environments. Isolated and independent, the industrial world rarely shared a common communications path with the enterprise environment, and even rarer was the person skilled enough to attack both realms.
When industrial companies began seeking a common networking platform that could be leveraged for office and plant floor alike, Ethernet seemed the likely prospect. In fact, it wasn’t long before Ethernet became the de facto standard for the company striving to modernise its business by incorporating the power of computing into their business models.
Using common protocols over standardised networking equipment brought many advantages to industrial and enterprise networks. Thanks to interconnected enterprise and industrial networks, seamless interoperability from the shop floor to the front office made multi-network connectivity, anytime, anywhere, a reality.
Corporations with multiple geographical locations could be united as if in a single building. Multifaceted organisational and commercial entities could more easily collaborate, simplifying intersystem relationships. Yet these advantages are the very cause of the vulnerabilities and weaknesses that expose industrial networks to many of the same security woes of the enterprise network. In some cases, even more.
Web exlusive: to find out more about the Belden’s approach to protecting the industrial operation through defence-in-depth security, visit http://instrumentation.co.za/+C18686
For more information contact Greg Pokroy, Jaycor International, +27 (0)21 447 4247, greg@jaycor.co.za, www.jaycor.co.za
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