Automation Partnerships

Here are some interesting pieces of news from today's release wire. ODVA entices a new principal member and National Instruments is reselling someone else's technology.

Bosch Rexroth Joins ODVA

ODVA today announced that Bosch Rexroth, known for drive and control technologies--as well as a supporter of Sercos, will become one of the organization’s principal members, joining Cisco Systems, Rockwell Automation, Omron and Schneider Electric. Bosch Rexroth’s increased participation builds on its long-term support of ODVA technologies and the ODVA organization in which it has been an active member for several years.

“Our customers demand open, interoperable solutions for Rexroth’s core product offerings in drives and controls, and our ability to do so will be enhanced by our increased integration of ODVA technologies into our solutions, especially EtherNet/IP,” said Dr. Bernd-Josef Schäfer, senior vice president, Technical Electric Drives and Controls in the Business Unit Industrial Applications, Bosch Rexroth. “Through our increased collaboration inside ODVA with other market leaders in industrial automation, Bosch Rexroth looks forward to helping industry achieve integration from device level up to enterprise business systems that is possible with industrial Ethernet and Internet technologies.”

“ODVA welcomes the increased participation of Bosch Rexroth as a principal member as well as their expertise in such areas as motion control and OEM machinery,” said Katherine Voss, executive director, ODVA. “Their engagement as a principal member will significantly increase ODVA’s ability to drive a holistic and integrated view of the industrial enterprise.”

ODVA will introduce Bosch Rexroth as a principal member at its 2011 Industry Conference and 14th Annual meeting, to be held March 1-3, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona, where Bosch Rexroth will also present an overview of the company and its motivation to become a principal member of ODVA. For more information about the ODVA event, visit www.odva.org.

NI To Resell GE Reflective Memory Cards

GE Intelligent Platforms today announced that it has signed an agreement that will see National Instruments (NI) distribute the GE cPCI-5565PIO Reflective Memory PMC and PMC Carrier Card for 3U CompactPCI systems. The cPCI-5565PIO – which operates at 2Gbaud and features 256Mbytes of memory and multi-mode transceivers – is based on the GE PMC-5565PIORC, but includes a customized carrier card specifically designed to be configured with NI PXI chassis as part of the company’s NI VeriStand real-time testing and simulation software platform.

“Reflective Memory is a technology that uniquely enables real time local area networks and in which each computer always has an up-to-date local copy of the shared memory set,” said Wayne McGee, Manager, Commercial Product Management at GE Intelligent Platforms. “These specialty networks are specifically designed to provide highly deterministic data communications, and deliver the tightly timed performance necessary for a variety of sophisticated, demanding distributed simulation and industrial control applications. As such, Reflective Memory is highly appropriate for the applications targeted by National Instruments, and can help NI achieve a sustainable competitive advantage."

“Our business is about helping engineers and scientists more efficiently design, prototype, and deploy systems for test, control, and embedded design applications,” said Ian Fountain, Senior Platform Manager for Real-Time Test at National Instruments. “Our customers continuously develop innovative technologies that impact millions of people. Adding the GE Reflective Memory to our NI VeriStand platform will help us deliver the network performance and reliability that those customers demand.”

NI VeriStand is a software environment designed for creating real-time testing applications more efficiently. It allows configuration of a multicore-ready real-time engine to execute tasks that include analog, digital, communication bus, and field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based I/O interfaces; triggerable, multifile data logging; real-time stimulus generation; calculated channels, and event alarming and alarm response routines.

How Stuxnet Spreads

Eric Byres, CTO of Byres Security Inc., Andrew Ginter, CTO of Abterra Technologies and Joel Langill, CSO of SCADAhacker.com announced today the release of their joint White Paper “How Stuxnet Spreads – A Study of Infection Paths in Best Practice Systems.” Byres says it is the first paper to detail how Stuxnet could infect a control system site protected by a high security architecture using modern, vendor-recommended best practices. The paper shows that current best practices are insufficient to block advanced threats. It then discusses what operators of control and SCADA systems need to do to protect their critical systems from future threats of this type.

Stuxnet is the first known malware to have been designed specifically to compromise a control system and sabotage an industrial process. It has been described by Symantec's forensic experts as the “most sophisticated” piece of malware they have ever seen.

The paper follows the progress of the worm as it moves through a hypothetical control system, configured according to vendor-recommended security best practices. In spite of strong security measures, the worm is able to compromise a sequence of machines, culminating in the compromise of the PLC devices which directly control the physical process.

While Stuxnet is presumed to have targeted the Siemens WinCC and PCS7 systems used at Iran’s uranium enrichment plants, its existence creates a new cyber security standard for all automation and critical infrastructure sites around the world.

Andrew Ginter remarked “The Stuxnet worm is the best-documented example of an advanced threat designed to sabotage an industrial control system. Other recent attacks have targeted control systems for industrial espionage. Control systems are now targets of advanced threats and today's best-practice defenses must be improved before they can stand against these kinds of adversaries.”

“By explaining how Stuxnet works, our paper helps security professionals understand what it takes to properly secure a state-of-the art industrial control system,” said Joel Langill. “The reality is that the majority of critical facilities are protected much less thoroughly than the hypothetical site described in our paper, and now they need to step up and protect against Stuxnet-like malware.”

“Our paper goes into great detail on Stuxnet infection pathways and highlights the difficulty of preventing infection from an advanced threat. While best practices for prevention should be implemented, control system operators should also put into practice early detection, mitigation, and containment strategies,” remarked Eric Byres. “Such strategies include putting into practice zone-based security as described in ANSI/ISA-99 Standards, paying particular attention on securing last line of defense critical systems, and understanding the unique security challenges of control systems versus IT systems.”

The paper concludes that changes to improve the cyber security of industrial control systems are urgently needed. You can download the paper here, but you must register with the Website.

Maintain Your Wireless Networks

Here's a set of new tools to keep your wireless networks at optimum performance. AirMagnet, now part of Fluke Networks, today released new versions of its AirMagnet Survey PRO 8.0 (including the AirMagnet Planner module) and AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer PRO 9.0. Both products now include the company’s new multi-adapter solution, which delivers dramatic enhancements to the wireless LAN (WLAN) designing and troubleshooting process by going beyond just collecting greater amounts of data, to integrating that data into features that help speed the performance and accuracy of site surveys, and deliver the industry’s most in-depth client roaming analysis to ensure wireless continuity.

“Our new multi-adapter solution, while not the only new update to these two products, is noteworthy because it provides a new way for users to measure and visualize the WLAN client experience. When integrated into AirMagnet Survey PRO (the Planner module) and AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer PRO, this has a profound impact on the time, effort, cost and effectiveness associated with designing, deploying and troubleshooting a WLAN,” said Chia-Chee Kuan, CTO and SVP of Engineering at AirMagnet. “We are the first to offer true multi-adapter capabilities that go beyond just the data capture and push to root-cause analysis leveraging our intelligence engine, AirWISE.”

The release of AirMagnet Survey PRO (including the Planner module) allows an organization to perform simultaneous multiple surveys – to dramatically reduce time and cost associated with WLAN design and deployment – by leveraging the industry’s only true visualization of the “client experience” with active surveys, and also includes the new WLAN throughput coverage mapping capability. Furthermore, it offers customized report templates to meet project requirements – a critical business component for installers, integrators and services provides that need to deliver customized WLAN design recommendations.

The new release of AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer PRO offers advanced WLAN roaming analysis that leverages the multi-adapter capability to allow users to monitor every client roaming event in the network and provide details on the success and failure of client device roams and the overall impact of roaming on the client experience and performance. This root-cause analysis of roaming issues helps mitigate reoccurrences of roaming associated problems in the future as users are provided with the precise reasons for the inefficient client roaming. Along with the roaming functionality, AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer PRO also offers a new wireless dashboard that focuses on top issues requiring immediate attention, helping to ensure maximum network security and performance, while still giving easy drill-down analysis on other issues that require deeper investigation.

AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer also addresses one of the most common IT staffer complaints with WLAN monitoring – “why isn’t there a single-click technique for testing connectivity and application performance?” Now there is, with a new onetouch connection audit with unique, on-the-spot verification for network connectivity and application performance.

20 Years of Profibus

Got a surprise package in the mail a couple of days ago just in time to aid in my injury recovery. Big thanks to Mike Bryant and Carl Henning at PI North America (PTO) for sending a copy of "Milestones: Profibus -- 20 years of standards for industrial communication." It's written by Klaus Bender, Jorg Fritag and Klaus-Peter Linder and published by PNO. Nice history of fieldbus development and some of the challenges engineers faced, how digital communication would help solve them, and how they developed Profibus to solve the problems.

There are always lessons within the lesson. In this case, read the book about how to go about developing a standard. Good read.

Another Milestone for WirelessHart

The Hart Communication Foundation has announced that the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) has approved the WirelessHart specification as a European National Standard (EN 62591). CEN released the standard to CENELEC, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization, whose members are the national electrotechnical committees of 31 European countries. CENELEC approved the WirelessHART European Standard on 01 June 2010.

“In March, the WirelessHart specification was approved by the International Electrotechnical Commission as a full international standard (IEC 62591Ed. 1.0),” says Ron Helson, Executive Director of the Hart Communication Foundation. “Approval as a European National Standard further confirms acceptance of the technology by users and suppliers as a technically sound, reliable and secure solution for wireless communication in process automation.”

The IEC Standard was approved by CENELEC as a European Standard without any modification. According to the announcement of approval issued by CENELEC, “members are bound to comply with the CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations which stipulate the conditions for giving this European Standard the status of a national standard without any alteration”.

A growing number of WirelessHart compatible products are available today from major global suppliers including ABB, Emerson, Endress+Hauser, MACTek, Nivis, Phoenix Contact, Pepperl+Fuchs, Siemens and others.

Released in September 2007, WirelessHart is an open and interoperable wireless communication standard designed to address the critical needs of industry for reliable, robust and secure wireless communication in real-time industrial process measurement and control applications.

WirelessHart is a backward compatible, evolutionary enhancement to the Hart Communication Protocol, the leading communication technology for intelligent process measurement and control field devices and systems with more than 30 million devices installed and operating in process plant applications around the globe.

The CEN was founded in 1961. Its 30 national members work together to develop European Standards (ENs) in various sectors to build a European internal market for goods and services and to position Europe in the global economy. CENELEC is a non-profit technical organization set up under Belgian law. CENELEC members have been working together in the interests of European harmonization since the 1950s, creating both standards requested by the market and harmonized standards in support of European legislation.

The Hart Communication Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization that provides global support for the application of Hart technology. The Foundation is the technology owner, standards setting body and central authority on the Hart Communication Protocol, establishing and controlling new technology developments and enhancements that support the needs of the process automation industry. Founded in 1993, Foundation membership includes more than 230 companies worldwide.