Drives & Controls October 2022

45 www.drivesncontrols.com October 2022 TALKING INDUSTRY n Aurel Buda Director, Product Management, Factory Automation Systems, Hans Turck Before joining Turck in 2016, Aurel studied computer science and worked for ten years in r&d, focusing on industrial Ethernet, wireless in automation and industrial middleware systems. His department is responsible for products ranging from remote I/Os to Ethernet switches and edge controllers. Luke Orehawa Safety Engineering Manager, Nidec Control Techniques With more than 17 years of industry experience, Luke specialises in industrial communications and deterministic control systems. He is responsible for developing and integrating Control Techniques’ functional safety products. He is also an authority on Ethernet systems and industrial data models. Mark Staples Sales and Services Manager, Euchner (UK) Following a career working for one of the world’s largest automation companies, Mark decided to focus on machinery safety and joined Euchner, developing its services business through training and consultancy services. Ian Holland Managing Director, Dold UK Before joining Dold in September 2021, Ian worked in the electrical distribution market for both national and local wholesalers. Earlier he was a product marketing manager for Schneider Electric. Before that, Ian was Honeywell Security’s European marketing director. Andy Pye Webinar Chair and Consulting Editor DFA Manufacturing Media Andy has edited many leading UK design and manufacturing titles over the past four decades. He is a graduate material engineer and spent five years in engineering consultancy before entering technical publishing in 1980. a real cybersecurity slant on some product technologies, to ensure that they operate in a really safe way – particularly our controllers, because they too can sit on an Ethernet network. If people attack these systems and get them to malfunction potentially, we are putting people in harm’s way.” Dold UK managing director Ian Holland suggested that engineers need to be very diligent,“firstly, in who is allowed access to the system and secondly, how they segregate individual parts of the system. I think there’s no such thing as a unhackable network,”he continued.“If there is the want, the desire, the amount of money invested in ethical hacking, to circumvent any system, then someone will get through whatever penetration diversion techniques you use. He warned that Ethernet, in the way in which it is structured,“has lots of holes in it. Anywhere up and down the seven-layer OSI model, you are able to intervene, capture packets and pretend to be someone else. Hackers can tell a network that they are the fastest way to the Internet, and then all of the traffic on the network goes to you. “All of these tricks have been around for years,”Holland continued.“And, you know, people have been able to do it for a long time. So I think the best way to avoid Ethernet degradation is to be properly segregated. Avoid remote access via USB, Bluetooth or any kind of unauthorised interaction with the individual nodes. Secondly, the network can be made very secure if you have the right level of network-sniffing software involved. Because it knows the structure of the network, it will stop or give notice of anyone who shouldn't be there.” Wireless Holland then turned to the topic of wireless safety.“There is a large pull from industry to have wireless safety,”he said.“Functional wireless safety under the right environment is definitely the way that the industry is going. We’ve been doing it for a couple of years. “Wireless safety does already exist,”he pointed out.“Our wireless safety has been developed with initially specific requirements used as the foundation, but we don’t use any known protocols. There are bespoke protocols in wireless. We use Ethernet and Profibus and we can connect a whole range of different products, but they’re pretty much just for reporting, The functional part is secure, with no cables. “The system is failsafe: if the signal disappears, or somebody tries to flood the area, then the devices simply turn themselves off until that that interference has gone away, and then you just restart the whole process again,”Holland explained.“And the products I'm talking about are already in use in places like Ocado and Amazon to run the AGVs in their big automated picking systems.” n This edition of Talking Industry is available online or as a Podcast – please see talkingindustry.org for more details. I Talking Industry The Panel Top Talking Takeaways n With the evolution of the Industrial Internet of Things, the boundaries between IT and OT are blurring. n It is no longer acceptable to simply shut down a machine to gain access. n There's no such thing as a unhackable network. n Soon, systems will need to get firmware patches for security reasons, perhaps nearly every day or every week, as happens with IT infrastructures.