ARC Advisory Group’s Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida in February represented the 21st edition of this annual event.
The Orlando forum provides an opportunity for thought leaders from technology end-user organisations, technology suppliers, academia, and government to convene to discuss emerging technologies and trends and share use cases. This event also often serves as a catalyst for important industry wide initiatives. This year was no exception.
This article provides an overview of the three general session keynotes covering industrial cybersecurity, the open process automation initiative, and the digital enterprise, respectively. Not surprisingly, many common themes resonated through all three presentations, not the least of which is that while connectivity is good, it must be implemented with rigorous, ongoing attention to cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity: “Find that red button”
Marty Edwards, the lead-off keynote speaker this year, is the director of Industrial Control Systems, Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) at the US Department of Homeland Security. Significantly, he brings a strong industrial control system background to this important position, both at Idaho National Labs and in the private sector.
Edwards began his talk by throwing out the hypothetical question: “We’re all going digital, but what is digital?” He then went on to explain, that the definition of ‘digital’ has changed since the old ‘3 to 15 psi days’. This referred to the pre-digital (and, in fact, largely pre-electronic) days, when field devices in industrial plants often communicated their measurements to dedicated, single-loop pneumatic controllers via compressed air signals.
Back then, controllers weren’t connected to a network and ‘digital’ literally referred to bits and bytes. Today, in contrast, ‘digital’ often means ‘connected,’ he explained, and provided one thought-provoking example of how connectivity has ramifications across multiple dimensions. In this case, a police department in the US had used data transmitted from a suspected arsonist’s pacemaker to monitor the suspect.
“Now that we’re connected, we have to start talking about security –because connectivity and security often don’t work well together, and an ‘air gap’ approach to security is no longer enough.” Here, of course, Edwards was referring to the physical and communications separation of the DCS or other critical process control components from other devices, systems, or networks.
“Ten years ago, we would have been preaching that you absolutely should not use IT security in a control system, because you’d be likely to break it,” he explained. “Today, there’s great potential for IoT-type security, many instances of which contain security from the ground up and products that are hardened right out of the box.
“We still see companies that don’t perform due diligence, with the number one challenge being lack of adequate perimeter security. Even worse, security breaches are often not adequately logged, so when management asks what happened, the answers are not readily available. At the end of the day, a determined nation state could breach any system.”
This led Edwards into a discussion on the concept of ‘cyber-informed engineering’. The concept is simple: In your facility, find the most critical of functions. Once you have identified that basic function, take it offline.
He explained that in years gone by every industrial facility had big, red dedicated buttons mounted in strategic areas around the plant that employees could use to shut down a critical function in case of a mishap. Today, however, these ‘red button’ types of safety shutdown functions have been digitised and connected. Those one or two critical functions need to be taken offline by creating specialty circuits for them. It is important to apply the correct level of technology – but no more than is really needed.
Edwards summarised his presentation as follows: “It is important to perform a proper risk assessment to identify the one or two critical functions in the plant, and then apply particular protection to those functions via separation, redundancy, etc. In other words, find that red button!”
Open process automation: “Looking outside the box”
For the second consecutive year, Don Bartusiak, Steve Bitar, and other ExxonMobil executives participated in the ARC Industry Forum to present and garner additional support for the important Open Process Automation initiative that ExxonMobil has initiated. Bartusiak, chief process control engineer at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, began his keynote presentation at this year’s Forum by outlining the business problem:
1. With many of the company’s large installed base of distributed control systems (DCS) at or rapidly approaching obsolescence, there’s a driving need to replace those systems.
2. It is critical to lower both the replacement and ongoing lifecycle costs for DCSs and derive more value from automation investments in general.
3. Currently available DCSs do not solve the above problem and the root causes are both technical and commercial.
According to Bartusiak, “Our goal is a standards-based, open, secure, and interoperable system. We need security that is built into the system and not bolted on. And we’d like to see commercial systems by 2021.”
He then went on to explain the background, “In 2010, when we began the R&D for replacing the fleet of control systems in our downstream refineries and chemical plants, we tried to look outside the box and found good solutions in the aviation, telecommunications and IT worlds.”
In avionics, the work of Future Airborne Capability Environment consortium (FACE) has resulted in open modular systems. The telecommunications industry has developed cell tower-based systems with network function virtualisation and software-defined networking. And the IT world has developed cybersecurity innovations that could be applied to OT. Bartusiak also mentioned that the emergence of IIoT, wireless, and cloud services, drive expectations for change.
In 2014, Bartusiak’s team developed the functional characteristics needed to engage industry. In 2015, the company contracted Lockheed Martin to define the requirements and integrate the prototype system. In 2016, ExxonMobil and The Open Group formed the Open Process Automation Forum to develop standards. The vision developed by this largely end user driven group includes the following system characteristics:
• Best-in-class components; with leading-edge performance.
• Conformant components integrated for systems that are fit-for-purpose for end-user’s needs.
• Adaptive intrinsic security.
• Commercially available and applicable across multiple industry sectors.
• Protect suppliers’ intellectual property.
• Portable end-user software.
• Simplify replacements; reduce lifecycle cost.
• Expanded markets for suppliers and system integrators for components and services.
• Innovation and value creation.
Bartusiak then explained the projected relationship between ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin, The Open Group, suppliers, systems integrators, and users, and the path to commercial systems. A Request for Proposal to 82 suppliers and SIs was issued on December 22 and the proof-of-concept prototype is scheduled for delivery by the end of this year.
Bartusiak explained that the Open Process Automation Forum of The Open Group ‘opened for business’ in September 2016 and held its inaugural meeting for member companies in November. As of January 2017, there were 20 member organisations. These include end-user companies spanning a variety of industries: Aramco Services, BASF, Chevron, Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Merck, Praxair, and Shell. DCS vendors include ABB, Emerson, Honeywell, Schneider Electric and Yokogawa. ‘DCS-adjacent’ companies include GE, netControl, and Siemens. A number of well-known hardware, software, and SI companies are also members.
Bartusiak stressed that while the Open Process Automation Forum already has 89 percent participation by automation companies, it will be important to get more automation end users to join and actively participate. “What makes this standards activity unique, is that it explicitly addresses a business framework by which participants can win,” he said. It also addresses the needed for interfaces with existing standards organisations. ARC believes that it is significant that the leadership of each of the six working groups includes a representative from both an end user and vendor organisation.
Next, Bartusiak addressed several industry questions that have come up relative to the initiative. He provided a reasonable explanation about why the RFP by Lockheed Martin was delayed. He also mentioned that ExxonMobil is not the only driver for change when it comes to open automation systems, with both Saudi Aramco and NAMUR having similar initiatives. In an afternoon session that followed, in what was likely to be their first actual face-to-face meeting, BASF’s Christian Klettner (representing NAMUR) and ExxonMobil’s Steve Bitar provided more details on these two initiatives. ARC was pleased to learn that both agreed that the two initiatives complement, rather than compete with each other.
Next, Bartusiak discussed the likely impact on traditional automation suppliers. For obvious reasons related to their installed bases, suppliers have been closely monitoring the progress of the initiative, which is also likely to seriously disrupt their supply chains. He believes that, despite some obvious challenges for suppliers, those that can adapt to the new environment will ultimately benefit from reduced systematic costs, increased margins by focusing on differentiating advantages, and revenue growth from the expanded market size and opportunities.
“In one respect, we’re almost at the same point right now where we were when each railroad company used its own rail gauge, so trains from one company couldn’t operate on another company’s rail system,” concluded Bartusiak. “We’re on a 20-year technology refresh era with DCS – we just have to change. Based on the lessons from our history in standardisation activities, end users need to get actively involved here and ‘help make the sausages.’”
Andy Chatha: Let’s work together and ‘go digital’
Andy Chatha, ARC Advisory Group’s president and founder, once again focused his own keynote address on where he believes industry is headed. Always the visionary, Chatha focused on the need for open systems and digital transformation, and how cybersecurity is key for both.
“Going digital can make companies more agile and responsive,” he explained. Companies look to increase their revenue and make smarter products that can provide both new opportunities to increase their services business, and opportunities for technology users to improve their operating performance and agility. But of course, how you go digital will depend on your particular company and business processes.
“We need open systems all the way to the top. It is critical for all your systems to work together, but to do so in a manner that does not increase cybersecurity risk. The latest move is to start embedding analytics into systems. Soon, companies will start adding applications on top of their platforms, as well as start turning their applications into platforms.”
The most important point is how to get the many different platforms and applications available today to work together and be interoperable. According to Chatha, “The digital enterprise will be a game changer and it all starts with smarter machines and other connected assets.”
To this end, the Cloud makes it less expensive to connect sensors, devices and systems to enable end users to run predictive/prescriptive analytics on appropriate assets and selectively share plant data with suppliers.
“The old paradigm, ‘Make your product and they will come’ no longer applies,” concluded Chatha. “Increasingly, customers will demand products that are customised to their needs and preferences. We need new blood and new companies to help us in this transformation. Change is hard, no one likes change. But this is also an opportunity to leapfrog to newer technology in our plants. However, in the end, it always comes down to execution.”
Collaboration needed
We heard the word ‘collaboration’ crop up many times across many different Forum workshops, presentations, and panel discussions.
Clearly, industry is at an inflection point. But to meet the significant challenges that lie ahead and leverage the full, game-changing potential of today’s emerging technologies, approaches and business models, organisations across the industrial world will need to find some way to collaborate effectively and work together for the common good. This includes end-user companies (large and small alike), industry associations, standards organisations, industry consultants (such as ARC), trade publications, academia, and even suppliers that normally compete head-to-head.
ARC believes that the recent progress made by the various open control system and IIoT initiatives is certainly encouraging.
For more information contact Paul Miller, ARC Advisory Group, +1 781 471 1141, pmiller@arcweb.com, www.arcweb.com
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