Friday, June 30, 2006

Optoblog Many of the postings at the Opto 22 Blog are like a travelog of its worldwide series of seminars. This one notes the recent visit to some NASCAR sites in the Southeast US. 1:56:29 PM    comment []

MESA Plant2Enterprise Conference MESA International, the industry organization for manufacturing software, has announced the location and keynote speaker for its annual meeting. This is the second year for the re-invigorated organization conference called Plant2Enterprise. The name aptly reflects the application category--that "middleware" that connects plant floor operations to enterprise systems and handles production management chores as well. This year, the conference is October 9-12 at the Disney Coronado Springs resort in Orlando. The keynote will be given by Dr. Michael Treacy, billed as "leading growth management expert, author and chief strategist at GEN3 Partners." He has become noted for ideas on product innovation in growth strategies and authored the book "Double-Digit Growth." Chairman Karsten Newbury also announced a Webcast series starting in July leading up to the conference. All end users who participate in a Webcast will receive a complimentary MESA membership that allows a discounted registration rate. 1:30:27 PM    comment []

Caliel leaves, Brown becomes Invensys Process president Big news item of the week is a change at the top for Invensys Process Systems. Mike Caliel has left the company to become president and chief executive officer of Integrated Electrical Services of Houston. He is replaced for the moment by Ken Brown, who has been named acting president of IPS. Brown has been general manager of the SimSci-Esscor and Foxboro Measurements & Instruments groups. The press release announcing the changes took pains to emphasize the experience and stability of the rest of the management team. The only Integrated Electrical Services in Houston I found on a Web search is a company that has built a nationwide chain of electrical contractors. It is just out of Chapter 11 reorganization. More to come. 1:04:46 PM    comment []

Back from vacation Back from vacation, getting organized and catching up on news. Alaska is a great place to visit. We did some dog sledding up on the Mendenhall Glacier and a little hiking. Danali (Mt. McKinley) was shrouded by clouds our entire time in that area. I usually take a classic philosopher and a novel along on trips. Not enough time to read--even on the cruise ship. Got through half the Enneads of Plotinus (yeah, I've already read them several times, but each time makes you think). Didn't even get my Dorothy Dunnett novel out of the suitcase. If you haven't read Dunnett, she put together a historical novel series called The House of Niccolo that is interesting. They are long and I don't have much novel-reading time. So I do one a year on vacation. Missed this one so far. I didn't get to see all the World Cup games, but what I saw of the US team was disappointing. There has been much criticism of coach Bruce Arena, but I think the most telling thing is that he just didn't have the team ready to play. The players lacked intensity and creativity. Must be time to clean house and bring in a new coach and new players. I bet there are a lot of younger players who would play hard and aggressively. 12:17:52 PM    comment []

Cybersecurity Here's an excellent post from Jim Cahill over at Emerson Process on cybersecurity. Cyber Security Best Practices through Segmentation and Rapid Disconnect. My RSS search on cyber security found an interesting post the other day by IBM's Todd Watson entitled How To Keep the Internet Sky From Falling. It's especially interesting to me because I've had the chance to meet Todd who is also based here in Austin, Texas. He offered some great guidance in the early days when we were trying to launch the Emerson Process Experts blog. The paper Todd referenced is by the Business Roundtable, Essential Steps Toward Strengthening America's Cyber Terrorism. Although this paper is mainly concerned with the loss of the Internet and Wide Area Network capabilities, it does have thoughts that process manufacturers around the globe need to consider. I ran Todd's post by Bob Huba who is leading the efforts on cyber security as it applies to Emerson's DeltaV system. He's part of a newly formed cyber security testing consortium for the process industries. Bob thought the paper as it applies to owners of control systems brought two points to mind. The first is to keep the control system completely segmented from internet traffic and the second is to not be dependent on information from outside the control system to perform basic control functions. This is especially true if the information required for control is coming from outside the facility over the internet. As part of control system security best practices Bob always promotes the idea that in a crisis situation on the plant LAN, such as a serious worm or virus attack that could leak into the control system, you absolutely must be able to sever the external LAN connection(s) with the control system until the issue is resolved. The control system must be able to keep functioning at some acceptable level with this connection severed. This is why the recommended DeltaV approach is that the optimization and other supervisory type control tasks be done locally in the DeltaV system whenever possible. This model is being used in universities and colleges where they have a âo[ogonek]student LANâo? for email, instant messaging, web access, etc. that is aggressively segmented from the main university system with very few interconnections. These connections can be highly secured and monitored. They can be easily and quickly severed if the "student LAN" gets infected or attacked so the main system can be protected. This is the model used in the initial development of the DeltaV system and it is the model that is still enforced. The model is based on enforcing a high degree of segmentation between the control system network and plant LAN so that critical control system functions are safe-guarded as much as possible from threats originating on the business LANs. By using very limited external connections, these connections are easier to protect and monitor and can also be easily severed when necessary. Bob has described more of these best practices in two whitepapers: DeltaV System Cyber-Security and Best Practices for DeltaV Cyber-Security. By Jim Cahill . [Emerson Process Experts] 11:48:20 AM    comment []