June 2013 / Volume 3, Issue 6

www.electronicspecifier.com

In this issue:Automotive

Ethernet and MOST go head to head•Integration bridges the voltage gap•How safe are our roads?•Beating the downside of SMPSs•Connectivity creates challenges•Meet the MISRA C:2012 Guidelines •Moving forward through collaboration•

Powering the ‘permanently connected’•Fast cars, fast service!•

MemoryAre we ready for NVM in servers?•

CommunicationsInside the OPC Foundation•DPI enables QoS in Next-Gen networks•Making M2M more accessible•Can DAS extend wireline revenues?•

Auto AlliancesWhy the move from

mechanical to electrical in-car systems is promptingindustry collaboration

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TTen years ago, it was common for industrialcontrol system integrators to subscribe tothe ‘buy everything from one vendor’

school of thought. Today, the picture is a lotmore complex. Multi-vendor platforms havebecome much more common as people begin toquestion the idea of buying everything from asingle vendor, partially due to significanttechnology advances, partially down toexpectations driven by the world of consumerelectronics and the expectations of engineersleaving university.

The increase in brand new systems that usehardware and software from multiple vendors isnot the only factor — older systems are beingupgraded in this way too.

“We’re starting to see a trend of existingautomation systems being retooled with additionalhardware and software applications to extend thelife of the systems, that come from differentvendors,” observes Thomas J. Burke, Presidentand Executive Director of the OPC Foundation.Burke says that the proliferation of smartphones isalso playing a part.

“Many of the end-users in factory automationand process automation are starting to usesmartphones and tablets as part of their dailylives, as they monitor their correspondingfacilities,” he says. “Although we are still in aMicrosoft world, we are seeing quite a trend forusing non-Microsoft applications and devices to beintegrated into the total infrastructure andsystems.”

InteroperabilityInteroperability is obviously a key requirement tomake all the components work in a cohesivesystem, and that’s where the OPC Foundationcomes in. The non-profit organisation has

developed an open standard, recognised by theIEC, which specifies communication of real-timedata from the plant between control devices fromdifferent manufacturers. It has also become the de-facto standard for connecting factory control andprocess automation devices to HMIs (human-machine interfaces) and SCADA systems(supervisory control and data acquisition — a typeof industrial control system typically used ininfrastructure and large-scale automated facilities).Today, the standard has evolved to facilitatealarm processing and notifications, as well asservices for historical data retrieval.

“The whole concept of islands of automation isgoing to be a thing of the past,” Burke says.“There is a need tobridge and connect all ofthe disconnected systemstogether to lower costand increase revenuethrough increasedautomation. It’s becomevery important to be ableto connect up many ofthe embeddeddevices alreadydeveloped as well asfuture embeddeddevices into acohesive integratedsystem.”

“End-users andsystem integratorswant to be able tochoose best-of-breedproducts from multiplevendors and expectthat all of theseproducts interoperate

Communications

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Speaking the same languageAs industrial automation systems become more complex, Sally Ward-Foxtonasks how do we make sure that all the machines can talk to each other in a

secure and reliable way?

together,” he adds. “The OPC is all aboutcollaboration — we are working on collaboratingwith vendors and consortiums for totalinteroperability.”

The Technical Advisory Council of the OPCFoundation includes members from all the majorautomation players, and they are actively part ofthe Foundation’s working groups. TheFoundation’s most recent development is OPC-Unified Architecture, an infrastructure formulti-vendor, multi-platform secure reliableinteroperability. This architecture provides amechanism for data integration from embeddeddevices all the way up to the enterprise, or asBurke puts it; “complete connectivity from the shopfloor to the top floor”.

OPC-UA provides the infrastructure to takedata/information from multiple vendors’equipment and be able to model it in an intelligentway; this allows generic applications to view andoperate on the data and the information, so thatintelligent decisions can be made to streamlineoperations.

Here’s an example. In the oil and gas industry, amaster control station in a central location controlsand receives data from all the subsea equipment,in what’s called a master control system (MCS).Each master control station is proprietary, and the

subsea controlmodules have tocome from the samevendor, to be able tocommunicate.Meanwhile, the oilplatforms themselvesuse a distributedcontrol system (DCS),where each subsystemor piece of equipmenthas its own controller.The master controlstation is the linkbetween the MCSand DCS (betweenthe subsea equipmentand the platform).OPC-UA has beenselected by the MCSand DCS Interface

Standardisationnetwork (MDIS), an organisation which is workingto standardise the interface between MCS andDCS systems by simplifying data communicationlinks while increasing the data quality. Eventually,devices in the subsea will be able to directlyconnect with DCS systems, as well as providingdata to the enterprise. Essentially, OPC-UA willmake data, and information about the data,available to generic applications that have norequired knowledge of the applications ordevices. Previously, only very high-level data fromthese devices was available.

Safety and SecurityWhile interoperability is critical in gettingindustrial automation equipment to communicate,

Communications

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The CodeMeter dongle in its metalcase for industrial use. It alsocomes as a smart card.

Figure 1. Wibu-Systems recently became anOPC member, with a view to making itsCodeMeter product OPC-UA compatible.

there are other factors to consider — safety andsecurity are also very important.

“Safety protects the people and the environmentagainst the malfunctions of a machine, whereassecurity protects the machine against humanerrors or attacks from the outside,” explainsOliver Winzenried, CEO of Wibu-Systems, acompany that specialises in digital asset,intellectual property and integrity protectionagainst piracy, reverse-engineering and codetampering.

Winzenried says that many different types ofsecurity threat exist in the industrial automationworld, citing the top ten security threats toindustrial control systems (see box).

“Honestly though, we come across even moretypes of attacks,” he says. “In the realm ofIntegrated Industry or Industry 4.0, controldevices are more connected than ever before.Data related to both the production process andthe customer’s product to be manufactured areshared along with the intellectual property andthe know-how that come along with it.”

Wibu’s CodeMeter licensing and protectiontechnology is designed to guard against all thesesecurity risks. It includes software developmenttools and a wide range of hardware form factorsto securely store license information andcryptographic keys either in a license file or in asmart card based device. CodeMeter dongles aredesigned for the industrial world, with extendedoperating temperature range and EMC protection.CodeMeter includes solutions to protectembedded software from copying, reverseengineering and manipulation, using a digitalcertificate chain of trust. It also comes withCodeMeter License Central for generating,managing and rolling out licenses.

CodeMeter and OPC-UAWibu recently joined the OPC, with a view tomaking its CodeMeter range OPC-UA compatible(Figure 1). OPC-UA on its own does providesecurity; security mechanisms authenticate andvalidate the secure operation betweenapplications and devices, and security can beconfigured right down to the finest levels ofgranularity, to say which users are authenticatedand allowed to read and write data from a givendevice. Wibu are aiming to simplify this security

process by adding CodeMeter, and provideadditional levels of security for applications whichrequire it.

“The OPC-UA standard features built-incommunication encryption and network deviceauthentication of its own,” Winzenried says.“Wibu-Systems is currently cooperating with theOPC Foundation in order to integrate CodeMeterwith the OPC infrastructure at both server andclient level.”

The outcome will result in the ability to transfersoftware licenses using the OPC-UAcommunications protocol, storing certificates inaccordance with OPC-UA directives and deployinglicenses and certificates in an OPC-UA compatibleway.

In summary, industrial automation equipmentnow increasingly speaks the same language, nomatter what vendor it’s from, as a result of acollaboration between the major players via theOPC Foundation. The Foundation’s architecturefor interoperability, OPC Unified Architecture, is amechanism for integrating data from every level ofan industrial facility and bringing it to theenterprise level so that intelligent decisions can bemade. It’s being rolled out in the oil and gasindustry, amongst others. While OPC-UA includesa good level of security, third party add-ons, likeWibu-Systems’ CodeMeter, can help simplify thisand increase security levels in particularly sensitiveapplications.

Electronic Specifier DesignElectronic Specifier Design | June 2013 | June 2013 || 5151

The top ten security threats to industrial controlsystems, as identified by the Federal Office forInformation Security in Germany:

Unauthorised remote service access•Online attacks using office IT networks•Attacks to commercial off-the-shelf systems,•COTS in ICS, like OS or networksDistributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDOS)•Human mistakes and sabotage•Intrusion of malware using USB sticks or other•hardwareReading and Writing of messages in ICS•Unauthorised access to resources•Attacks to Networks•Failures and external events•

8 Visit www.opcfoundation.org8 Return to contents page.