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Thursday, April 2, 2009 |
Recently several people moves in the safety and security areas have suggested a coming together of those two areas. Both are heavily based on standards and both have the "side effect" of improving process performance. In physical business proof of this trend comes announcement of the merger of exida and Byres Research. Byres Research will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of exida but it will combine forces with exida as applicable.
exida is a certification and research firm specializing in safety and high availability automation systems. Byres Research, founded by noted industry security researcher Eric Byres, focuses on critical infrastructure security.
"The philosophy of Secure by Design is broadening to Safe and Secure by Design," said Eric Cosman, Dow Chemical Company engineering solutions consultant and co-chair of the ISA 99 Committee on Control System Security. "Rather than putting band aids on systems after the fact, the trend now is to design security and safety in at the beginning. This announcement makes perfect sense because it brings safety and IT security together under one roof."
Adds Eric Byres, chief technology officer, Byres Research, "There is much to learn from safety engineering on how to provide sound security analysis and services," he said. "It is a perfect synergy -- a mature market joining with an evolving market to get the best from both worlds."
"We are pleased to welcome Byres Research into the exida family," said John Cusimano, exida director of security services. "This merger represents a major step in bringing the safety and security communities together with a common goal of helping to protect our critical facilities."
7:56:25 AM 
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Here's a news piece from GigaOm media about a Federal proposal to put some of that stimulus money into improving the electrical grid. Given everything I heard last week at ABB Automation and Power World, this is very fitting. I've been saying for a couple of months--please don't waste that stimulus money, put it into infrastructure improvements. That'll create both jobs and a legacy.
7:22:24 AM
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Jim Cahill over at the Emerson Process Experts blog has an interesting post on handling obsolescence (and justifying upgrades). Worth a read. We tend to think that once a system is in, that's the end of it. But all systems--even human ones--need updates, training, tweaking. I believe that's called "continuous improvement."
7:18:59 AM
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© Copyright 2009 Gary Mintchell.
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