Security

Electronic attacks on the automation systems of industrial and utility plants are rare. Nevertheless, when they do occur, the consequences can be severe. Strategies used to protect office networks (for example) are not always directly applicable to the specific needs of industrial and utility plants. Whereas traffic on an office network is largely arbitrary from a moni-toring point of view, and intrusion detection is often restricted to scanning data packets for specific attri-butes, network traffic in a plant is normally easy to correlate to the system’s activity. Significant deviations from expected patterns can be an indicator of intrusions. ABB’s System 800xA Security Workplace uses this to add security functionality to System 800xA control systems. Because the approach builds on prov-en System 800xA concepts, operators do not require special IT-security training to be able to make good use of this tool. Strictly no admittance Keeping an eye on IT security in the plan