I heard about a “safety certified” PLC in the late 1980s at an ISA SP84 standard committee meeting. The “logic solver” (as they later called it) was the focus of attention in the field of functional safety back then. Many engineers even said, “My system is safe because I…
exida explains Blog
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, September 27, 2018
- Certification
The New Technology in Logic Solvers
- by Patrick O'Brien
- Tuesday, September 18, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Cyber Risk Assessments and Security Level Verification: High-Level Risk Assessments (Part 1 of 3)
As the number, scale, and connectivity of industrial automation systems continues to grow, it becomes increasingly crucial to fundamentally understand, evaluate, and manage cybersecurity risks. The objective of an effective cybersecurity management program should be to maintain the industrial automation system consistent with corporate risk criteria.
Ownership for industrial…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, September 13, 2018
- Functional Safety
Is It Possible to Extend Proof Test Intervals?
I am often asked whether extending proof test intervals will be a problem.
This is a tricky question. The design and engineering SIL calculations for the Safety Instrumented Functions (SIFs) are taking credit for a specific proof test interval with a defined level of coverage, as defined within the…
- by Chris O'Brien, CFSE
- Friday, September 07, 2018
- Functional Safety
Functional Safety Assessment of Valve Assemblies (Part 3)
In Part 1, we covered the emerging trends in the valve assembly market, how these trends relate to IEC 61511 requirements, and the anatomy of final elements. In Part 2, we discussed the need to show requirements traceability down through the design of the safety instrumented function…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, August 30, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
How Much Cybersecurity Do I Need?
During an IACS cybersecurity risk analysis, each zone of a network is given a target security level. The levels are one to four, with one being the least amount of protection and four giving the most protection. For each zone we ask, “How much cybersecurity protection do we…
- by Dave Gunter
- Friday, August 24, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Managing Risk: How Cybersecurity Differs for Facility Managers
Operations and facility managers have a level of responsibility that requires a great deal of judgment, technical understanding, and the ability to make the right call when managing risk.
Safe, secure, and profitable plant operations are the cornerstones of how a plant manager is judged. The plant manager relies…
- by Patrick O'Brien
- Thursday, August 16, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
An Integrator’s Guide to Managing the Cybersecurity Risks of Remote Access
Last week I attended the ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls Symposium in Bethesda, Maryland. The conference was attended by equipment manufacturers and municipalities, but system integrators composed the largest group. The technical sessions mainly discussed new opportunities for implementing the industrial internet of things (IoT) and cybersecurity…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, August 09, 2018
- Alarm Management
Alarm Shelving - Relieve the Symptoms of Nuisance Alarms and Create a Peaceful Control Room
In an ideal world, every alarm in a process control system would indicate a malfunction or abnormal condition that required operator action. In the real world, alarms that are irrelevant or annunciate excessively—otherwise known as nuisance alarms—can pop up occasionally to quite frequently. They pose a risk to the…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Thursday, August 02, 2018
- Certification
Do you know your Site Safety Index?
There’s a lot that exida does behind the scenes to advance the industry and benefit you. We try to make sense of data that we collect and put it to good use. One thing we found is that human activities play a role in functional safety, often causing the intended safety performance…
- by Michael Medoff , CFSE, CISA
- Monday, July 23, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
IEC 62443 : The Road to More Secure Products
As the incidence of cybersecurity threats in automation systems continue to rise, the automation world continues to grapple with how to address these issues. There are many good practices published in the IEC 62443 series of standards available to end users such as creating demilitarized zones between the business…
- by Jim Jenkins
- Thursday, July 19, 2018
- Functional Safety
Burner Management Systems (BMS) and IEC 61511
Prescriptive BMS standards contain a wealth of knowledge on combustion hazards, unit sequence of operation, and the equipment configuration required for combustion safeguards and combustion control. This experience cannot be overlooked; there is just not a Safety Lifecycle to tie in the Functional Safety Management of the BMS.
That…
- by Michael Medoff , CFSE, CISA
- Thursday, July 12, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
IEC 62443: Levels, Levels and More Levels
By now we’ve all become familiar with safety integrity levels (SIL), as they have become part of our everyday lives. However, with the recent release of several cybersecurity standards in the IEC 62443 series, things are getting more complicated. This series of standards introduces two more levels…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, June 21, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
How Does the IEC 62443 Cybersecurity Standard Apply to Integrators?
The IEC 62443 series of cybersecurity standards include over ten documents covering various subjects. Buying a full set is a bit expensive, but for me the real cost is the time needed to read and understand them. So I often ask one of the experts at exida…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Thursday, June 14, 2018
- Functional Safety
Fake Fact: Diagnostics are useless
The idea that diagnostics are useless contradicts everything I’ve ever learned and taught about diagnostics.
Diagnostics help identify problems. Diagnostics can turn a fault that is unrevealed during normal operation into a detected fault, which allows me to take action. That action could be an automatic transition to the…
- by Chris O'Brien, CFSE
- Thursday, June 07, 2018
- Functional Safety
Functional Safety Assessment of Valve Assemblies (Part 2)
In Part 1, I covered the emerging trends in the valve assembly market, how these trends relate to IEC 61511 requirements, and the anatomy of final elements.
Now let’s discuss why we need to show requirements traceability down through the design of the safety instrumented function and then…