Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition

Citect has published a SCADA security white paper and has been hosting numerous webinars as well as participating in security conferences to address concerns over SCADA security.

Citect is dedicated to partnering with its customers and takes recent reports of SCADA vulnerability very seriously. As a result, the company decided to offer information to its users and the general public on how to best protect SCADA systems by addressing the following aspects:

* Vulnerability Assessment
* Network Design
* Firewalls, VPN and IPSec
* Application Security
* Audit Trails
* Wireless Issues for Remote Sites
* Intrusion Detection
* Redundant Control Centers

In September, Citect’s Mike Kenworthy was invited to speak by American Water Works Association (AWWA), an international non-profit scientific and educational society dedicated to the improvement of drinking water quality and supply. At the AWWA Security Conference in Washington, D.C., he gave a well- attended presentation titled “Secure Your SCADA Network.”

Source and more info: techlinks

Sharon selectman voted unanimously on Tuesday, Oct. 17 to upgrade the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), a computer control system for the Water Division of the Department of Public Works.
Eric Hooper, superintendent of the Water Management Advisory Committee, brought the two-part proposal before the selectmen, prefacing it by stating the windstorm from the previous July had forced the need to upgrade system.
“We would have preferred to have taken more measured steps to do so,” said Hooper.
Both the software and the hardware of the SCADA system required upgrades. The previous system is 10-years-old and the operating system was Windows 95 NT.Upgrades are needed to provide redundancy which is currently lacking as well as updates to the computer system, adding modern radios with modern signals. Hooper also wants a backup computer to be placed at the Department of Public Works in order to maintain the health and safety of town residents.

Source and more info: townonline

Proficy HMI/SCADA iFix 4.0 from GE Fanuc Automation is now available in Chinese and Japanese. The iFix system for monitoring, controlling, and distributing plant-side data, and key component in the Proficy automation software platform, was previously available in German, French, Polish, Russian, and English. The new version also offers improved third-party PLC integration and developer and operator productivity enhancements.

Commenting on the product’s reach, Roy Kok, GE Fanuc senior product manager, said, “GE Fanuc has been investing in product localization for many years. With each new release, we reinvest in localization, insuring our position as a global provider.”

iFix 4.0’s extendable architecture is capable of discovering PLC information, adding to developer productivity, efficiency, and error proofing. This is made possible through a device discovery and automated configuration capability that supports Siemens S7 PLCs, Rockwell (Allen-Bradley) PLCs, and other OPC sources.

Source and more info: manufacturing

FactoryPMI Reporting provides dynamic report generation embedded within the SCADA system. The web launched architecture enables the fully functional, web based HMI clients to produce professional pdf based reports without the cost of individual client licenses or the need to physically install client software at each workstation.

FactoryPMI Reports feature powerful in-report table and graph components that intelligently place headers, footers, page numbers, and create new pages depending on the dynamic, SQL driven data. The reports can be saved to pdf, HTML, and other formats.

Reports are generated in an easy-to-use graphical page layout environment within the FactoryPMI designer, which is web launched from the network or Internet without an installation process. Data can be polled from any SQL database, native FactoryPMI data, or from any OPC source via FactorySQL.

The reporting plugin also adds two additional components to your Component Palette, a Row Selector, and Column Selector. These selectors allow end users to select rows or columns from a database, then dynamically links that data to other components on the screen, such as a graph, table, or report. This provides the user with an easy yet dynamic means to filter any data. A free fully functional 2 hour runtime can be downloaded from: www.inductiveautomation.com/products/factorypmi/plugins/

Source and more info: automation

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to join a dynamic Project Delivery Team, as a Senior Technical Project Manager, and be responsible for delivering a large SCADA Impelmentation. You will also be responsible for managing a mixture of internal and vendor staff, while adhereing to project budgets and deliverable time lines.

The successful applicant will demonstrate the following skills / experience:-

* Extensive experience in managing projects to meet cost, time, business requirements and client satisfaction.
* Demonstrated experience as a senior project manager on large technical projects (>$5M).
* Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders, senior management and team members.
* Demonstrated ability in managing client and stakeholder expectations.
* Demonstrated experience in leading people including building working relationships, teamwork, time management and delegation.
* Superior technical skills, preferably in a SCADA environment

Source and more info: itwire

GE Fanuc Automation, a unit of GE Industrial, has announced the availability of Proficy HMI/SCADA - iFIX 4.0 in Chinese and Japanese languages. iFIX is a premier industry solution for the comprehensive monitoring, control and distribution of plant-wide data. A key component of the Proficy automation software platform, iFIX 4.0 delivers enhanced functionality including improved third-party PLC integration, and both Developer and Operator productivity enhancements.

“GE Fanuc has been investing in product localization for many years,” said Senior Product Manager Roy Kok. “iFIX is available in Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Polish, and Russian today. With each new release, we reinvest in localization insuring our leading position as a global provider.”

iFIX 4.0’s extendable architecture is capable of discovering PLC information delivering new levels of developer productivity, efficiency and error proofing. Through an innovative device discovery and automated configuration capability supporting the Siemens S7 PLCs, Rockwell (Allen-Bradley) PLCs and other OPC sources.

iFIX 4.0 delivers on Operator Productivity by offering canned functionality to drill into tag details, instantly trend variables, view enterprise data through hosted portal displays and deliver thin client connectivity to SCADA nodes through Microsoft Terminal Services. Graphic tools deliver a variety of drawing productivity tools and advanced capabilities for 3D Piping and connected object management.

Source and more info: automation

n a SCADA application it is often necessary to execute logical operations in order to calculate interdependences between PLCs. For this, independent HMI/SCADA package zenOn provides a Mathematics driver and support for VBA script integration. If the limits of the Mathematics driver are reached, or if the user is reluctant to program in VBA, COPA-DATA GmbH now offers an easy and powerful solution.

The IEC 61131-3 soft control platform STRATON can be used as the head controller in an application. Whilst running as a background process, STRATON takes over the complex calculations required for control tasks. STRATON has no negative effect on the zenOn runtime, ensuring the safety of the application. The integration of STRATON in zenOn results in a SCADA system with integrated PLC logic, called SCADA Logic.

Users of SCADA Logic do not need to learn the VBA syntax, because STRATON is programmed using familiar IEC 61131-3 programming languages including FDB, LD, IL, ST and SFC. A cyclic execution guarantees a valid process image for the SCADA system at all times. If required, several instances of STRATON can run simultaneously to share tasks in a structured way.

Source and more info: pandct

Pune became the second city in the country to have a SCADA system, which can monitor feeders and transformers of the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL). The system was inaugurated by district guardian minister Ajit Pawar along with three new sub-stations of Alankar, Karvenagar and Wakadewadi at a function at Balgandharva Rangmandir on Saturday.

The SCADA system will enable the MSEDCL engineers to monitor the entire Pune grid online, enabling them to pinpoint faults as and when they occur. The only other city in the country to have such a system installed is Hyderabad.

The new sub-stations are part of the Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (APDRP), which will ensure an investment of Rs 1,311 crore in the Pune district to spruce up the distribution network of MSEDCL in the next three to four years. ‘’Pune city will see an investment of Rs 586 crore, Pimpri-Chinchwad Rs 137 crore, while rural areas will see investment of Rs 588 crore,’’ said MSEDCL Managing Director Sanjay Bhatia. An amount of Rs 100 crore has already been approved by Central agencies like Rural Electrification Corporation and Power Finance Corporation. The projects will be executed on a turnkey basis by project management consultants like Louis Berger group, Consultant Engineering Services, Unison and Bedmutha and Feedback Ventures.

Source and more info: expressindia

Citect, one of the world’s largest, real-time intelligence software companies, today announced that its Switch2Citect solution has allowed end users and Citect Integration Partners (CIPs) to convert over 1000 screens from other SCADA vendors to CitectSCADA.

Launched in 2005, Switch2Citect has helped many companies throughout the world easily upgrade to CitectSCADA from one or multiple legacy systems. Switch2Citect automates approximately 75% of manual tasks, making upgrading to CitectSCADA from outdated SCADA systems easier and more economical.

In one example Sun Peaks Resort the largest ski resort in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. Citect Partner, Guillevin Automation, converted screens from a legacy system in both the Sun Peaks’ resort and the village to CitectSCADA. According to Jeff Havisto, Project Engineer for Guillevin Automation, “Switch2Citect is a very economical and easy solution for automating the conversion of legacy systems with minimal time and effort required.”

“We chose CitectSCADA because it offers the best overall solution and lowest cost of ownership, and Switch2Citect made it possible to preserve our existing graphics and database,” explains Ian Tabor, I.T. Manager, Sun Peaks Resort Corporation.

In addition to providing an automated way to upgrade to CitectSCADA from Intellution Fix32 and iFix, many customers have also utilized Switch2Citect importers to convert and improve their existing systems from InTouch and FactoryLink. “Since we launched Switch2Citect, customers from all across the world, in all industry segments, have been asking us for additional importers to help them upgrade from their legacy control system,” says Stephen Flannigan, SCADA Global Director, Citect. ” In response Citect has accelerated the development of new importers, with RSView and Monitor Pro to be released later this month, and we have started work on WinCC, Wizcon, Genesis32 and Vijeo Look importers.”

Source and more info: pandct

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems enable an operator to remotely view real-time measurements, such as the level of water in a tank, and remotely initiate the operation of network elements such as pumps and valves. SCADA systems can be set up to sound alarms at the central host computer when a fault within a water supply system is identified. They can also be used to keep a historical record of the temporal behavior of various variables in the system such as tank and reservoir levels.

When working with SCADA data, the modeler often has access to more data than can be easily processed. For example, the modeler may have several weeks of data from which to calibrate an extended-period simulation (EPS) model and must pick a representative day or days to use as the basis for calibration. Selecting the best modeling analysis period from these thousands of numbers, which may be in several sources, is extremely difficult. Usually, there is no day when all of the instrumentation is functioning properly, so selecting that day is often based on finding the day with the fewest problems.

Another challenge of working with SCADA data is that incorrect readings, time-scale errors, or missing values may not be readily apparent in the mass of raw data. Fortunately, the modeler can use any of several procedures to compile and organize SCADA information into a more usable format, usually in the form of a spreadsheet. The tables and graphs developed using these procedures can then be used directly for a range of applications, including EPS model calibration, forecasting of system operations, and estimating water loss during main breaks.

Source and more info: wateronline