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Thursday, May 1, 2008 |
Spent the afternoon yesterday at Emerson Process Management. Interesting lunch with blogger (and marketing manager) Jim Cahill and conversation about Web 2.0 topics. Got an update about the DeltaV and systems side of the business. Thanks to Juan Carlos ("Johnny Bravo") who gave me a coveted tour of the DeltaV labs. Gosh, what a lot of gear they test up there. Really interesting. Wireless is the topic of the day at Emerson, and I heard a lot about it. Much will show up in the Automation World Wireless World Review over the next couple of issues.
I'm accumulating ideas for trends as I plan for the 2009 Automation World calendar. So I got to take notes from ABB's chief technology officer this week, then had 3 quality hours with Emerson's chief strategy officer Peter Zornio last night over dinner. He really knows the industry and gave me a lot to think about. You'll see some results in the pages of AW next year (or even some this year).
You, too, can add to my idea bank of topics, industries and trends I should cover in upcoming issues. Email me at gmintchell@automationworld.com. (By the way, if you have a concern or criticism, email those to me, also. I promise not to hold them against you.)
12:15:52 PM 
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I hung out for a little while at the ABB User Conference yesterday then headed up to Austin to make a couple of visits since this is as close as I'll be in several months. I've already reported on the ABB conference--apparently there is no more News coming from there. Big conference with record attendance, though.
One news item from the conference, but not from ABB is from Byres Security. In conjunction with MTL Instruments, a division of Cooper Crouse-Hinds,Byres Security Inc. released a new loadable security module (LSM) for its Tofino Industrial Security Solution that discovers and identifies what devices are on the network and creates the firewall rules to control the traffic flowing to them. All this without risk to the industrial process according to the release. This latest LSM, known as the Tofino Secure Asset Management module, locates devices and generates rules simply by analyzing the traffic on the network.
Believing this to be a first, not only in industrial security but "possibly also in the IT security market," the release notes asset management tools in the IT world have been available for over a decade, but all are based on the principle of sending probing messages onto the network to discover what is deployed. Unfortunately for industrial users, there have been many documented cases where these discovery messages have caused SCADA and process control systems to crash."
Designed specifically for industrial control operations in critical industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, utilities and power generation, the Tofino never probes the control devices. Instead, it quietly listens for traffic and then uses special characterization techniques to determine the types of control devices on the network. When it discovers a new device, it prompts the system administrator to either accept its deductions and insert the new device into the network inventory diagram, or flag the device as a potential intruder. This way, an up-to-the-minute network map is always available to the control engineer.
Eric Byres, CTO at Byres Security Inc., notes: "Passive scanning techniques have been discussed in academic literature or released in open source projects before, but as far as we are aware, this may be the first successful commercial application of the technology in the world."
8:22:17 AM
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Welcome to May. I can't believe it.
Automation company Festo has made it on Engadget. Congratulations. I saw some of the interesting pneumatic things on a trip last fall to the company's headquarters in Germany.
Saw this note about attendance at Chicago's McCormick Place in the Chicago Tribune. Trying to read the numbers and comments, it appears that the trend of company meetings rather than large trade shows that we see in the automation business is part of a larger trend. But IMTS is this year in Chicago, and it will probably be big again.
7:52:29 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Gary Mintchell.
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