by Gary Mintchell | Jul 8, 2015 | Automation, Data Management, Events, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Process Control, Security
Here is the official wrap of the recent Honeywell Users Group (HUG) Americas symposium. It was the 40th anniversary celebrated with the theme “40 Years of Innovation.” Officially “more than 1,200 people” attended the event.
I have written a couple of times during the week here and here. This information comes from a press release issued last week. Along with some executive quotes is a note that Honeywell Process Solutions has been developing and implementing technologies for the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) for many years.
During the event, Honeywell announced a collaboration with Intel Security McAfee which will expand its industrial cyber security capabilities to help defend customers from the increasing threat of cyber attacks.
“The process manufacturing industries are facing a critical time in history due to a convergence of factors such as security threats, a shrinking workforce and lower oil prices, among others,” said Vimal Kapur, president of Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS). “These factors are driving a greater need for our technologies and services because they’re designed to help companies conduct operations more efficiently, and with less risk.”
The conference revolved around three core technology themes directly impacting companies’ abilities to successfully adapt to changing market conditions: digital transformation and smart operations, system evolution and risk reduction, and smart instrumentation with smart integration. Throughout the week, Honeywell executives, technology experts and customers explained how these core areas can turn technology buzzwords like Big Data and Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) into practical applications.
“HPS has been leveraging the concepts and technologies behind the Industrial IoT as part of the vision that we have been evolving towards for several years,” Bruce Calder, HPS chief technology officer told general session attendees. “In order to run a reliable operation that continues to improve performance and business results, you will need to install smarter field devices, achieve more connectivity, collect more data and find ways to use that data to run a smarter operation.”
Calder also gave attendees a first look at HPS’ first native app for mobile devices and tablets that connects to different sources and applications across the company’s portfolio to create a more-intuitive mobile experience for plant workers. Mobility is part of the initiative to introduce a suite of apps that, along with new cloud functionalities, will enhance existing solutions to deliver better business efficiencies.
The conference agenda included a wide range of presentations from Honeywell customers ExxonMobil, Chevron, Reliance, DuPont, Great River Energy, Syngenta, Genentech, Valero and others. These presentations – covering everything from wireless applications and cost-effective control system migrations, to alarm management and energy conservation – highlighted how real-world manufacturers have used Honeywell technology to streamline their businesses by generating and analyzing the most-meaningful data from their operations.
In addition to these presentations, attendees received a first-hand look at some of Honeywell’s newest technologies designed to change the way their enterprises work, generate the right data to inform decisions, and reduce overall risks. Highlighted technologies included:
- UniSim Competency Suite – the newest addition to the UniSim family of training technology, which now includes 3D virtual environment capabilities to provide realistic experiences.
- DynAMo Alarm and Operations Suite – software that leverages more than 20 years of alarm management experience in the process industries to help users reduce overall alarm count by as much as 80 percent, identify maintenance issues and increase visibility of critical alarms that require urgent attention.
- Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security Risk Manager – the first digital dashboard designed to proactively monitor, measure and manage cyber security risk for process control systems.
- SmartLine Level Transmitter – the newest addition to Honeywell’s line of modular, smart field instrumentation designed to integrate with control systems to provide benefits such as extended diagnostics, maintenance status displays, transmitter messaging and more.
- The EC 350 PTZ Gas Volume Corrector – the first member of a new line of high-performance electronic volume correctors (EVCs) that more accurately measure natural gas delivered to industrial customers, helping them meet government and industrial standards.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 25, 2015 | Automation, Security
Honeywell Process Solutions and Intel Security announced during Honeywell User Group HUG 2015 a collaboration said to help bolster protection of critical industrial infrastructure and the Industrial Internet of Things.
Intel Security’s McAfee technologies will be integrated with Honeywell’s Industrial cyber Security Solutions.
“The threat of cyber attacks on industrial and critical infrastructure targets is growing rapidly and our customers are demanding effective cyber security to assist them in protecting their assets and people. Working with Intel Security expands our capabilities to enhance the availability, reliability, and safety of customers’ industrial control systems and plant operations,” said Jeff Zindel, global business leader for Honeywell’s Industrial Cyber Security Solutions group. “Our collaboration with Intel Security will enable integrated, validated solutions for our industrial process customers to more rapidly deploy and better protect their investment. This approach is critical to enable the productivity potential of Honeywell automation solutions and the Industrial Internet of Things.”
Initially, Honeywell will qualify Intel Security’s Application Whitelisting and Device Control with its own proprietary cyber security for its Experion Process Knowledge System, providing a fully vetted and qualified solution designed to increase security without sacrificing reliability. Honeywell is also offering Intel Security’s Enterprise Security Manager and Next Generation Firewall to its customers. The products will be supported by Honeywell’s Industrial Cyber Security Risk Manager, which provides a continuous evaluation of cyber security risks within industrial environments.
The McAfee Application Whitelisting maintains system integrity by allowing only authorized code to run. McAfee Device Control allows users to specify and categorize what data can and cannot be transferred to various plug-in devices.
by Gary Mintchell | May 7, 2015 | Automation, Industrial Computers, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Process Control, Technology
There were two other announcements at the Schneider Electric Global Automation Conference last week. One ties to the Industrial Internet of Things and the other to helping process control systems work better, longer.
PAC for IoT
First is a high-end Modicon M580 Ethernet programmable automation controller (ePAC). It features hot standby functionality (HSBY), native Ethernet, and embedded cybersecurity in its core. Schneider claims it as the first PAC built for the Industrial Internet of Things, but there have been many controllers with built-in Ethernet released over many years.
The built-in cyber security is interesting since that is the claim to fame for the recently announced Bedrock Automation controller. Obviously, this is a trend worth noting. And a future comparison of how each of those achieves its goal should become a to do item for follow up.
“We’re excited to introduce major innovation in automation with the new Modicon M580 ePAC,” said Jose Bonomo, vice president, offer management, Hybrid Systems, Schneider Electric Industry Business. “Cutting-edge functionality allows us to drive true customer benefit with a future-proof solution designed to meet the most pressing industry challenges.”
Additional features include reinforced cyber security through the AchillesTM Level 2 and ISA Certifications; native time stamping solutions; extension of architecture change during the run; and new topology capabilities.
Advanced system management
The company also has acquired LimeWare, a provider of system analysis and auditing software for Schneider Electric‟s Foxboro Evo process automation and I/A Series distributed control systems. The acquisition provides foxray software to help customers pinpoint and address critical industry challenges.
“Acquiring LimeWare and its foxray software is an integral part of our strategy to help our customers improve their operational integrity and operational insight, while future-proofing their operations,” said Gary Freburger, president of Schneider Electric‟s process automation business. “With additional investment in our flagship process automation offerings, we have even more power to address critical challenges around safety, reliability and efficiency. The ability to more easily tackle pain points, while driving value across the entire process automation chain, is one of the big ideas we are discussing with our customers in Dallas this week, and it remains a major differentiator for our process automation business.”
LimeWare was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Its foxray system management software complements the functionality of Schneider Electric‟s Foxboro Evo and I/A Series process automation systems. The solution offers additional capability for configuration management, alarm management, operator action analysis and overall documentation. It includes:
- Change tracking with a complete change management workflow process;
- Graphics visualization of the control block loops;
- Integrity checks to solve all DCS configuration issues;
- Scheduled reports;
- Alarms and operator action management and tracking;
- I/O and FBM spare reserve and tracking;
- An advance query engine that can quickly fetch any DCS information.
“foxray software is the go-to tool for working with our control system database on a daily basis,” said Scott McWaters, process control engineer, Hunt Refining Company. “From easily locating and reserving spare I/O to improved troubleshooting and insight with the „where used‟ function, system health reporting, operator action reports, alarm history, inhibited alarm tracking and many other functions, foxray has greatly increased our efficiency. The software has been instrumental in our recent alarm rationalization efforts, and the alarm shelving tool will be used to help cut down on the number of call outs to our on-call engineers for nuisance alarm silencing. This contributes to our overall confidence in the integrity of our operation.”
LimeWare and its offerings will be fully integrated into Schneider Electric‟s process automation business and will continue to be managed by its existing executive team.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 8, 2015 | Automation, News, Organizations, Security
Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) recently held a press conference to announce it has opened the Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security Lab to advance its development and testing of new technologies and software to defend industrial facilities and operations such as refineries and manufacturing plants from cyber attacks.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), reported cyber incidents on industrial targets in 2014 continue to increase and are up more than 25 percent since 2011. ICS-CERT’s latest report also said that in 40 percent of incidents that were reported, experts did not know how hackers intruded the system because of a lack of detection and monitoring capabilities.
Similar concerns were reflected in a global survey on cyber security conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs in September 2014 on behalf of Honeywell. In that survey, more than 75 percent of respondents from 10 countries said they were fearful that cyber criminals could disrupt major sectors of the economy, and identified the oil and gas, chemicals and power industries as particularly vulnerable.
For more than a decade, Honeywell has developed and provided proprietary cyber protection software and technology for its leading process automation solutions, including Experion process controls, which are used at hundreds of industrial sites such as refineries, chemical plants, gas processing units, power plants, mines and mills around the world. During that time, the Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security group has delivered more than 1,000 industrial cyber security projects globally.
“We have a successful history of providing cyber defense solutions for our industrial customers and this new cyber lab expands our capabilities,” said Jeff Zindel, global business leader for Cyber Security, HPS. “We will be able to validate new solutions faster in a variety of scenarios and increase our customers’ defenses against the growing threat of cyber attacks.”
The new Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security Lab, located in Duluth, Ga., includes a model of a complete process control network that Honeywell cyber security experts will leverage for proprietary research, hands-on training, and to develop, test and certify industrial cyber security solutions. This lab will help accelerate development time of new cyber protection technologies and speed availability to customers.
In addition to its new lab, Honeywell’s Industrial Cyber Security group has also added a number of cyber security experts to increase the bench strength of its development and business teams.
“Many of our customers have come to us looking for cyber security solutions to defend their industrial facilities, operations and people from damage, disruption and misuse,” said Zindel. “They understand the very real threat that is out there, and they want to be more proactive in guarding against it. Honeywell is building on its leading industrial cyber security expertise and experience with this new research and development lab as well as adding highly-regarded cyber security experts around the globe to support our customers’ growing needs.”
As an aside, only because I notice these little anomaly things, I wanted to attend the virtual press conference using my iPad. I couldn’t. The streaming technology used Flash technology. Flash is not a secure technology. And, Apple iOS does not support Flash. <sigh>
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 12, 2015 | Automation, News, Operations Management, Security
In years past there were as many as 10-12 companies presenting at the hours-long press conference “marathon” preceding the official beginning of the annual ARC Industry Forum in Orlando. This year, there were only five companies presenting. I’ve already written about the Honeywell announcement.
Yokogawa devoted most of its 30 minutes discussing the 100th anniversary of the company. This announcement follows along with one of the main themes of the overall conference—cyber security.
Yokogawa Electric Corp. (www.yokogawa.com) announced its collaboration with Cisco Systems Inc. to deliver Shell’s SecurePlant initiative. SecurePlant is a comprehensive security management solution for plant control systems that was jointly developed as an initiative between Cisco, a leader in the IT industry, Yokogawa, a leader in mission-critical plant automation systems, and Shell. The three companies have agreed to proceed over the next three years with the implementation of SecurePlant at around fifty Shell plants globally.
Industrial producers around the world face a wide range of operational challenges in areas such as cyber security that pose a pervasive threat to safety and availability. Most companies with global operations, however, still take a relatively simplistic plant-by-plant approach, such as implementing operating system security patches and anti-virus pattern file updates. As a result, security levels tend to vary at each plant.
In the general practice of control system security management, individual control system vendors extensively validate security patches and anti-virus pattern files to confirm that they do not interfere with system operation and then report the results to their customers for implementation. Since plants tend to use a variety of control systems and equipment from different vendors, occasionally with multi-generation platforms from a single vendor, this process is often complicated. For this reason, plants increasingly have the need for plant-wide integrated services that take a more holistic and efficient approach to the management of system security.
With the aim of standardizing security practices at Shell plants around the world and minimizing control system vulnerability, Yokogawa and Cisco collaborated on the design of the SecurePlant service and will jointly provide deployment and operational services.
The SecurePlant solution is designed as a standard solution that consists of the delivery of OS patches and anti-virus pattern files for control systems and the provision of real time and proactive monitoring of solution delivery, as well as a help desk operation to manage this solution.
Supplier-certified Windows security patches and virus signature files are distributed from a SecureCenter to the SecureSite at each plant via Shell’s existing global network. The real time and proactive monitoring capabilities enable the centralized management of plant security. A customer help desk operated jointly by Yokogawa and Cisco is available 24/7/365 to manage solution related incidents.
Moving forward, Yokogawa and Cisco will continue to offer comprehensive security solutions involving the deployment, operation, and monitoring of control system environments. These services are applicable to plants of all sizes in a wide variety of industries, including facilities spread out over a large geographic area. In addition, both companies will leverage their technologies and experience to develop deep industrial automation (IA) solutions such as remote system maintenance, remote plant asset management and Big Data on the top of a secure remote access platform to help companies in making faster decisions, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO), and achieving operational excellence.
