June meeting
The June technology presentation for SAIMC Vaal branch was by Gary Friend from EXTECH Safety Systems and the topic was ‘Cyber Security in modern process control networks’. Gary is a regular presenter at our meetings and as usual he demonstrated his vast knowledge and experience on the topic. For those of us who have large control system networks with the usual amount of interconnectivity and user interfaces it presented a wakeup call, showing how vulnerable we may be to hacking, viruses and other similar external attacks on our control system networks. With control system protocols becoming more open and interconnected and with opportunities to plug in almost anywhere, the problem is being exacerbated, and evidence shows that security breach events in industry are increasing exponentially. The fact is that if you connect your plant control network to your Ethernet business network you may be at risk.
A number of myths relating to cyber security are circulating. These include the thinking that ‘my control networks are not connected to the outside world’ and therefore cannot be hacked; that ‘control systems are not susceptible to viruses’; and also that ‘hackers do not understand scada’ and therefore they are not interested in my control system. The solution is not simple, but a good start is to know your systems and their interconnectivity well, know which existing security measures and firewalls are present, know how it can be defeated or bypassed, and then determine the likelihood and consequence of such unauthorised access. Network security risk modelling known as Safety Access Level (SAL) can be conducted as a systematic risk study methodology. The ISA 99 standard is available to provide guidelines for such models, which can be used to determine zoning of the systems, identify conduits of communication and determine the requirement for security control.
Knowing the possible routes of access, it is possible to provide or implement additional levels of security. Due to the fact that control system equipment often does not make provision for adding security software, it is sometimes necessary to add a hardware security device as your industrial firewall. These devices can for example take control of the protocols allowed on the control network, provide master-slave control, control the direction of communication or provide limitation of function codes within communication protocols. In practice they provide an additional level of security to survive an attack or infection from the outside world.
We thank Gary for sharing the information with us and creating additional awareness of a topic that may well prevent serious problems on our control system networks.
July meeting
The July Vaal branch meeting was hosted by Yokogawa. The branch Chairman, Eben Grobbelaar, introduced the speaker for the evening, Nico Archer. The topic was the Yokogawa plant asset management system known as Plant Resource Manager (PRM). This is an asset management software tool for the digital network era. It provides the facility to manage field devices and maintenance work efficiently and helps reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) in an industrial plant.
The presentation covered various aspects of asset management and included the following aspects and functionality:
The core of PRM is Device Master Database. Once a device is defined on PRM, information such as its device name, model name and supplier name is recorded as a device master record. Dynamic information like maintenance history, audit trail record and alarm history is also recorded. The PRM expands its capability to the device diagnostics area. Once a device diagnostics is defined, the diagnostic data, alert, predictive alarm etc are supported by PRM. So far PRM covers only automation assets such as field instruments and valves. In the future it will expand its capability to production assets such as rotating and reciprocating machinery, as well as discreet automation devices such as MCC equipment.
PRM systems have many benefits. In summary they can:
* Minimise risk and cost (lead time) for commissioning and start up by:
- Centralised plug and play remote device connection check.
- Centralised remote setting of field device parameters.
- Quick online diagnosis.
- A standardised approach for multi-vendor devices.
* Minimise the risk of unnecessary site trips by monitoring device healthiness through diagnostics.
* Minimise scheduled maintenance downtime as maintenance work is optimised by advanced device diagnostics.
* Generate collaboration between operation and maintenance through:
- Maintenance work to assure reliability, but not repair work after breakdown.
- A shift maintenance paradigm from event-driven to scheduled work.
- Maintenance to contribute to better operation availability.
We thank Nico Archer for his well articulated presentation, which earned him a Certificate of Outstanding Speaker from the Vaal branch.
Visitors
The turnout from the Vaal members was again excellent, with representation from fuel refineries, petrochemicals, steel, mining, power and engineering industries, suppliers and many more. This year continues to be an enlightening experience and we would like to thank our audiences for their unwavering support and are looking forward to welcoming everyone again.
For more information contact Oratile Sematle: [email protected]
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.saimc.co.za |
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