Christmas Wishes

CHRISTMASTIME SYDNEY HARBOUR 2012

Dear Readers,

Wouldn't you like to get away from the office, down to Sydney Harbour for a few hours in the sunshine ? Yes folks, down-under it is summer in Sydney at Christmas.

These days, I am sure you would agree it is hard to get all the office people together, with the kind of hectic travel schedules that modern corporate engineering demands.  Some in our office, including yours truly have spent up to 150 days travelling this year, and we as is customary each year, we planned to get our local office colleagues together and chat one on one about how things worked out.

The Invensys Sydney team, put away the laptops and tablets during the week and boarded "The Southern Swan" for a Christmas lunch.  This ship, a tall ship originally from Denmark c 1922, but still cruising around Sydney Harbour some 90 years later, is a fully rigged ship [with an engine] and sails and ropes and interesting bits and pieces nautical.

It had been raining hard in the days prior and there was a worry that our team combined with about 60 other tourists might have to cram down in the hold below deck or scramble under a kind of tarpaulin if the rain continued to pour down. Some of our team came to the dock sporting large brightly colored branded nylon jackets [souvenir's of long completed SCADA projects].

But the seagulls were flying and we ended up on a sunny afternoon, a few clouds, light breeze and a place down the stern of the boat to swap yarns about fish that got away.

With this simple postcard, would like to wish all the people that interact with us at Invensys Operations Management in any way, a happy and joyful Christmas time and we will be back with more entertaining, enlightening, and educational blog stories in the New Year.

Sincerely,

Chris J Smith


Invensys SCADA portfolio

Securing SCADA Islands

Islands of SCADA in a sea of 'public' insecurity
photo - 'squares' by flickr:fdecomite

Good Tidings - This post discusses securing the environment of SCADA where in-stations and outstations are located within a sea of insecurity created by the use of the Internet as well as the other 'public' communications channels. These Islands of Security require additions to the SCADA protocol stacks as well as the higher user level metrics and accountability.

Beautiful SCADA Security

Xiamen Art University Gate 2007

I just wanted to say a few words today about the role telecommunications accountability and metrics play in the assurance of security for SCADA Systems. Secure operations of the telecommunications network can be determined by making continuous inferential judgements about the communications traffic between Master Station and its Remote Terminal Units [RTUs] and then being able to 'shut the gate' on any potential operations or connections which are deemed to be insecure.

Blog Initialization Startup

I started this blog this month [Dec 2011] - slowly - more exploratory - 

beginning with a single page termed "The Art of SCADA".. which will become more a permanent page, with useful definitions this and other bloggers can refer to.

I've been with Invensys now, since my time in Leeds and Northrup, starting in 1990, and enjoying many years of working with the technology, sales, and delivery teams.  Although I thought I had joined a Control Systems Company, Leeds and Northrup Australia had me working on SCADA projects based on the LN2068 technology.  Leeds and Northrup eventually was aquired by Siebe PLC for The Foxboro Company, which eventually became Invensys Operations Management.