By Joshua Corman
As remote connectivity increases, it’s imperative that organizations secure the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) that connect and control safety-critical processes from malicious attacks. Yesterday’s best practices are no longer adequate: Recent attacks on critical infrastructure show the wide-reaching consequences of relying on outdated, disproven...
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By Jeff Bates
Manufacturing equipment is built to last. Legacy equipment—some of which is decades old—is the backbone of today’s factories. But these reliable machines can be a huge road block to creating an interconnected, data-driven Internet of Things (IoT) environment.
Effective IoT integration relies on legacy equipment being able to relay data...
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By Stephen Sponseller, PTC
It is clear that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has arrived—and is here to stay. Today’s IIoT is perhaps best defined by interconnectivity. This enables better monitoring, information gathering, role-based information presentation, and operator situational awareness—and ultimately leads to improved decision-making, increased optimization,...
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By Aron Semle
IoT is alphabet soup. IIoT, IoE, HTTP, REST, JSON, MQTT, OPC UA, DDS, and the list goes on. Conceptually, we’ve discussed IoT for a long time and understand the basic idea and technical feasibility. Now we’re moving forward, identifying use cases and building prototypes. So it’s about time to work on that alphabet.
A big challenge in IoT is...
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By Steve Sponseller
In the Oil & Gas Industry, shifting prices mean shifting priorities. With oil at $100/barrel, exploration and production companies emphasize speed. They do everything they can to get new wells online in the least possible time. Anything else is a lower priority. At $50/barrel, the priority shifts to performance. Everything counts. That applies not...
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By Aron Semle
I have a 5 MB connection out to my remote sites in the field. For each site, I need to poll for status, alarm, and historical data. If I have one hundred sites, how fast can I poll each data set? How long will it take to send a control signal? Do I need to upgrade the connection? Downgrade?
Ever find yourself asking these questions? If yes, you are...
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By Aron Semle
Historical data is at the heart of improving any process. Whether the goal is improving quality, reducing waste, increasing safety, or simply trying to understand what's going on, without historical data, we're forced to guess. Most professionals in the process automation space are aware of historians as tools to store process data. But historians...
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By Craig Resnick and Tim Shea
Worldwide demand for energy drives new investments in oil & gas exploration, production, and transportation. This increases the need for accurate flow metering for upstream, midstream, and downstream applications. Greenfield installations will support much of the growth, but there is also great potential to replace aging meters on existing...
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By Steve Sponseller and Russel Treat
Kepware Technologies is a private software development company headquartered in Portland, Maine that focuses on communications for the Automation Industry. Since its inception in 1995, Kepware has developed a wide spectrum of drivers and plug-ins that support over 150 protocols and allow users to communicate with a wide range of PLCs, DCSs, RTUs,...
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By Tony Paine
Today's industrial control systems leverage the latest OPC Unified Architecture (UA) standards, which provide cross-platform interoperability between software applications and devices. This allows for the vendor-independent exchange of real-time, alarm and condition, historical, and many other types of data. Due to the criticality of Industrial...
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By Tony Paine and Russel Treat
Control systems are used broadly by many industries and implemented in a variety of ways. In Manufacturing and Process Plants, control systems consist of the integration of Human Machine Interface (HMI) software, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Distributed Control Systems (DCSs), computers, and a wide range of automation software through the...
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By Craig Resnick
Information technology and automation are the backbones of most manufacturing operations; however, safety and security breaches caused by IT-related risks are on the rise. In the coming years, both the rate of technology change and the degree of required information integration are predicted to remain high. How will we manage the associated risks?...
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By Tony Paine
The ability to securely move information between software applications and hardware appliances is critical to any automated process. To make this possible, an interoperable communications platform must be layered into the control system. Today, both the designers and implementers of these systems are taking a “defense-in-depth” approach to securing...
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By Craig Resnick
Attaining connectivity and communications between products and solutions at all levels of the organization remains a challenge for all manufacturers and other industrial enterprises. Given an appropriate business case, most enterprises today are not averse to replacing existing legacy products, systems, and software with new state-of-the art...
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By Craig Resnick
Today's manufacturers face immense competitive pressures and increasing regulatory requirements. Many companies have shed their excess manufacturing capacity, making it increasingly critical to improve the effectiveness of their remaining manufacturing assets to satisfy customers, drive new growth, and increase profit margins.
To improve...
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By Gregory Hale
There is no better term around today that sums up the requirements for oil and gas drillers than two simple words: real-time. With millions, if not billions, of dollars at stake, there is no fooling around. The easy days of oil and gas exploration are long gone. Now, E&P companies must not only use more sophisticated technologies to hike business...
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By Gregory Hale
It is very easy to get lost in the everyday bits and bytes of the automation environment, but the reality is systems need to stay up and running and everyone within the organization needs to be on the same page. Time is of the essence and systems need to run at full bore while being functional, safe, secure, and profitable. No excuses....
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By Craig Resnick
This ARC View addresses the growing need for an enterprise service bus that enables communications and data sharing between plant floor devices and enterprise applications and presents one supplier’s solution.
Kepware Technologies, a developer of communication and interoperability software solutions for the automation industry, recently briefed...
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By Gregory Hale
You never know who is watching. Just ask the oil and gas company executives hit by “Night Dragon.”
“Night Dragon” attacks relied on a combination of spear-phishing, social engineering, Windows bugs and remote administration tools (RATs) to guarantee success. The catch is none of the tactics were particularly sophisticated, said researchers at...
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A new generation of OPC is upon us. This latest specification is a major step forward in both technology and capability. Called OPC-UA, it starts by unifying the multiple specifications of the past, and redefines the acronym of OPC (formerly OLE for Process Control - a purposeful implementation of certain Microsoft technology) to OPC-UA (now...
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By Kepware Technologies
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a communications protocol built into most IT infrastructure currently available. From printers to Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) systems, routers to the computers used in automation, virtually everything in the IT sphere supports SNMP communications. Not only is it already available, but it is...
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By Tony Paine
Efforts are underway to create a smarter grid by adding intelligence to the electrical infrastructure that connects generation, distribution, transmission, and consumption. According to calculations by the Department of Energy, the current electrical grid consists of roughly 10,000 generating units with a generation capacity in excess of 1,000,000...
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M2M technology in manufacturing allows exchanging and gathering information between sensors and controllers during collaborative machining process and motion control. In a manufacturing environment, industrial M2M serves an integral component of a much larger and more complex manufacturing infrastructure. Industrial M2M can mean intelligent...
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The plain truth is that the communication driver is one of the most important aspects of any automation system. It is the blood that powers your system. The communication arteries and veins reach out to all areas of your plant, sending and receiving data, efficiently and tirelessly ensuring your ability acquire, analyze, and adapt to the situations...
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