Changing Guard with Foxboro Evo Protect

SAFE - AVAILABLE - SECURE

People take protective measures to guard something important to their daily lives and take care of others involved in it's operation. To protect means to make someone/thing/group safe from harm, ensure continuing availability and provide security from attack. These three aspects are embodied in the Foxboro Evo PROTECT activities.

We changed recently from having control and safety systems to having Protect and Operate systems as part of the set.  Mapping these to traditional systems

	Foxboro Evo
System	Protect	Operate
Security	Y
Supervisory	Y	Y
Control		Y
Safety	Y
Protection	Y

• Protection systems are traditional in the utility and power sectors and generally provide real-time monitoring and extremely rapid action against transient events such as overload, underfrequency and overfrequency, protecting equipment and powerlines directly.
• Safety systems are more aligned to protection of plant and people in process control, where chemical processes can become uncontrolled and endanger plant and personnel.
• Security systems are becoming more tightly integrated with all aspects of computer [cyber] based control systems and are designed to protect against malicious attack and denial of service.
• Supervisory Systems provide remote supervisory control, however through the use of necessarily public or unsecured communications systems require the use of securely authenticated communications protocols to protect communications.

The combination of all systems relating therefore to maximizing availability, maximising personnel safety and maximizing system security while protecting the installed assets make sense and this therefore represents the core of the Foxboro Evo : PROTECT system.

PROTECT activities can also be extended into the application layer for particular industry segments.  In upstream oil and gas for example, the following protection activities can apply:-

• Environmental Protection - Leak Detection in Pipelines [Transient]
• Environmental Protection - Blowout prevention on Wells [Transient and Permanent]
• Personnel Safety - Safety Shutdown of Well Systems with H2S entrained
• Communications Protection - Use of DNP Secure Authentication Application, Use of secure Wireless Communications

Key Benefits of Foxboro Evo PROTECT

• Ensure continuously safe, available, secure operations
• Prevent an incident before it happens
• Enable fast responses to faults at every level
• Unify safety and control user experience, without jeopardizing hardware integrity

Key Capabilities

• Intelligent integration of the world’s leading emergency shutdown system provides an option for integrated control and safety functionality, available through a single operator interface
• No single point of hardware and software failure
• Pervasive redundancy in hardware and software optimizes system availability and reduces risk
• State-of-the-art cyber security hardening is designed and implemented throughout the system to enhance risk reduction

With Foxboro Evo we believe it is important to understand the way in which multiple systems integrate without compromising function in order to provide the complete protective system.  Cyber security, Safety and Protection systems combine forces to provide a complete protection of people, assets and information in order to maximise safety security and availability.  Think over the change in the way of looking at things with Foxboro Evo by reviewing the link.

This changing of the guard topic is a useful anchor for any commentary on the new methodology of Foxboro Evo Protect. If you have any constructive comments these will be published alongside this blog posting.



Photo Attrib. CC Indigo Girl : Flickr.com