Inductive Automation has released update 8.1.17. Key to this release are security updates and extensive upgrades for the Tag Editor. Arnell Ignacio provides an overview on the Ignition blog.
Ignacio gives the rationale for the security updates. “On May 12, 2022 many products at the Pwn2Own competition were successfully hacked, with the goal of using this information to make improvements and ensure customers are well taken care of. Security awareness is a must, especially in today’s interconnected world, and being proactive can help prevent potentially catastrophic results in many critical systems. Although it’s never fun to hear about security vulnerabilities, the reality is that the world is constantly evolving and security threats will always be at our doorstep. The most important thing is how we address these threats and the steps that we take to protect our systems.”
Inductive Automation has a process to assure users get the latest security updates through various means, such as nightlies, critical updates, and the release train. That’s why the company recommends all Ignition users update to the latest version of Ignition, which is currently 8.1.17.
For our 7.9 users, we have back-ported security fixes from 8.1.17 into 7.9.20, which is now available for download. To protect our users, Inductive Automation will publish a technical advisory 60 days after the release of 8.1.17 and 7.9.20 that will disclose details for most of these vulnerabilities.
In addition to the important security update, Ignition 8.1.17 brings a major update to the Tag Editor in the Ignition designer, and improvements to Perspective, Vision, Docker, EAM, OPC UA, drivers and the platform.
Prior to this update, when you wanted to modify expressions, bindings, alarms, and event scripts, the relevant tag information was moved into a new window, making it unavailable. In 8.1.17, we brought all of that relevant information back into the dialogue window.
The next several improvements to the Tag Editor help to maintain context when modifications are made. In Ignition 8.1.17, updates were made to the Tag Browser Trees, Category Panes, and persistence of categories.
We also brought back category panes within the Tag Editor. Prior to the current update, all properties were visible, thus making the view overwhelming and harder to focus on. With Ignition 8.1.17, the category panes group related properties together, making it easier to focus when editing specific items.
In Ignition 8.1.17, the Expression Binding editor will appear as a pop up. This will afford users a larger editing workspace while keeping the Tag Editor in view, thus maintaining context.
With a security update and a major facelift to the Tag Editor, what more can software development throw into Ignition 8.1.17? Well, plenty more! Let’s check out what additional goodies are found in Ignition 8.1.17.
Other updates include:
Perspective—Added expandSubviews and collapseSubviews component methods to the Table component.
Vision—Added “Login Prompt” and “Login Message” to the Vision Login project properties, which change some of the default text when attempting to log into an IdP from a Vision Client.
Docker Image—Added a GATEWAY_MODULES_ENABLED environment variable that can whitelist a set of built-in modules that will remain installed prior to gateway startup, which helps with container re-creation events.
EAM—The Collect Backup task now times out after 60 minutes of waiting for the agent to generate the backup, plus an additional 60 minutes to transfer the backup. In addition, we added a new system property (ignition.eam.task.collectBackup.transferTimeout) that can modify the transfer timeout.
OPC UA—The Ignition OPC UA server’s max session count is now configurable via a new Max Session Count property.
Redundancy—Failover to a redundant node is now allowed if the nodes have different platform versions, which allows attached clients to remain connected to at least one node during a redundant pair upgrade.
Platform—The audit log now records when a user logs in or out of the gateway’s web interface.
And many more.
