PAS Musings

CyberSecurity Reactions

Earlier this week, our esteemed Founder and CEO participated on the panel of  experts at the NPRA CyberSecurity conference.  This was the first event of its kind hosted by the NPRA for the petroleum, petrochemical and chemical industries.

What we learned there validated our thinking.

The focus today by all the other vendors is on intrusion prevention.  They think it’s all about detecting the hacker. 

But that’s just part of the story.

Intrusion prevention does nothing about how to figure out what the hacker did or how to recover.

I guess it’s like buying your dream house and then finding out that the place needs maintenance and costs more than you can really afford.

There’s great joy on signing the deed, but then big headaches as you try to figure out what work needs to be done and even more problems in figuring out how to pay for it. 

All this after the initial signing party on catching such a deal.

Prudence suggests that we think beyond just noticing that the hacker came to visit.  We need to be prepared to assess the damage and implement a recovery plan.

But maybe the IT folks focused on CyberSecurity think that isn’t their problem – they’ll just leave those nasty post-detection tasks to the control guys.  After all, IT is now the hero for keeping the bad guys out, aren’t they?

Now try asking the average control engineer how they get these nasty post-detection tasks done… After all, hasn’t IT told them everything they need to know?

The first issue is finding out what was impacted.

Ask the control engineer what tools he/she has to scan for unauthorized changes across all the automation infrastructure – from the PLC & DCS to real-time database and advanced apps.  You’ll almost certainly get a blank look… 

And when you probe further to find out what kind of backups he/she has for the automation assets at the plant, you’ll probably find out that the backups date from 1-6 months ago.

Ouch!  That makes for a pretty tough recovery process.  Especially if any sort of regular maintenance or upgrade work has been going on…

Now I don’t want to pick on control engineers (I used to be one), but the truth is that there is generally a pretty lax approach to automation system backups.  (Lots of our friends found this out the hard way after Hurricanes Katrina or Rita.)

So a good solution would be to implement an automatic backup for all automation assets, and sprinkle in some multi-platform change tracking?? 

That would surely help solve the problem…

Some call that CyberSecurity Parts 2 & 3 – the “other” (more important?) part of the problem.

We call it Integrity. 

Don’t operate you plant without it.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Foxboro Thrust!

Seems that we’ve hit the mark with the Integrity web seminars as well meeting our success with The Book.

After handling some initial problems with logistics (argh!), the Integrity and Automation Change Manager web seminars are rolling like clockwork.

And whether its through our targeted marketing or just a pent-up demand for  automated documentation tools, customers are expressing a strong interest in the Foxboro IA Data Model (plug-in) for the Integrity software.

We started the year with a very strong set of Honeywell Data Models and then launched our reseller partnership with Honeywell in this area, but we recently finished the Fox IA Data Model and proved its worth at a number of customer sites.

With references and a proven capability in hand, we launched it to the market via a series of webinars and emails.  The web seminar includes a live demonstration of the software and this is cranking up the excitement with customers.

As with Alarm Management, we’ve raised our expectations for performance by the Integrity business in 2006.

+52% is looking good!  Very good indeed!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Engineered with Integrity

In case you missed the press release issued last week, I want to quickly fill you in on an exciting new development around our Integrity software.

Some time ago, I posted a few entries using an iPod as an analogy for how our Integrity software helps bring clarity to the tangled web of databases, system configurations and interconnectivity in most process plants. 

Like the iPod, the Integrity software brings simplicity to complicated plant systems.  And as our customers know, it does this really well.

What we’ve discovered along the way is that the Integrity software is not only useful for simplifying life for engineers of all types in the plant, but that it is an even more perfect fit for project engineers working to migrate a plant from one control system to another.

Migration projects are difficult beasts to manage from beginning to end.  Three big challenges loom ahead of any engineer engaging in such work…

First, knowing what to migrate. Old systems are always loaded up with all kinds of unused configurations, code fragments and the like.

Second, knowing that the important stuff is migrated correctly. Being able to compare like for like and ensure that there aren’t any mess-ups in setting up the new system.

Third, explaining the new configuration to operations, and showing them how to check it out for themselves – but also leaving a management-of-change tool in place to ensure that they’re not changing your hard work out of their good intentions to “make things right”.

So how does Integrity fit into this?

Integrity provides the tool to upload and decipher the old configuration, displaying it in a standard format that’s easy to use as a guide for the new system. First challenge made easy.

Integrity also provides error-checking and the configuration documentation tools to allow old-vs-new comparison across multiple systems in a way that is just not possible using native configuration documentation tools.  Second one done.

Third, Integrity provides a simple web-based interface for operations to go in and “see for themselves” – without having them dig around in the actual system configuration.  And it has built-in change tracking to spot those that cannot go in to “make things right” on their own.

All three challenges met - and the Engineered with Integrity program is born!

As Harry McKinley of ENGlobal Automation Group sums it up best in his quote: “Integrity…reduces software configuration and acceptance testing labor costs by 20-25% and shaving weeks from documentation schedules”.

And even better he says: “There is no other tool available today that can … yield such savings, while helping improve overall job quality…”

Engineers love it, and so do I!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Hidden Gems: The Wizard Family

I’ve talked before about how PAS has a number of secret technology gems and how we grew in spite of our expertise in stealth marketing, but now I want to highlight another of our hidden gems.

Although the ultimate stealth marketing title still belongs to our DCS Configuration Services (which still don’t have a web page of their own, by the way), the Wizards  aren’t far behind.

It’s as if the Wizards have been too “small” or too “simple” for us to spend much  time on them. 

So they’ve been left languishing in the corner of our web pages, just sitting there hoping that a customer will find them.  And occasionally, one does.

In fact, in the last two weeks, two customers have found them and brought them out of the corner to play.

What are the Wizards?

They are the ControlWizard and TuneWizard software products.  They are the essence of Super-Genius distilled into a small downloadable package. 

Very cool.

The ControlWizard helps find the control loops that are performing at substandard  levels.  Those loops that need adjustment to help the plant run better and make more money, more reliably.

The TuneWizard then helps fix the under-performing loop by identifying the parameters to once again reset it to perform its best.

The Wizards are there to help every plant – because the behavior of every plant changes over time with the seasons, the product mix, the equipment health, etc.

So we did what’s right for these guys – we tool them out of the corner and are putting them front and center for a while. 

The marketing machine is promoting them to everyone we know – trying to make up for all that time spent in the corner.

Want to know more?  Register to attend the web seminar.

And give the Wizards in your life the respect they deserve this month.  They’ll thank you for it.

Don’t know any Wizards? 

Then feel free to give our guys the respect instead – and boost your reliability and profitability while you’re doing it.  Click here to do this.

Thanks

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!