Kazio Networks

There will soon be a new cabling infrastructure standard for healthcare. TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association) has proposed and started work on defining new requirements for healthcare facilities e.g. hospitals and clinics/clinical environments. The standard will target topologies for cabling, cable manufacture, distance requirements, locational/routing requirements for most healthcare systems.

Areas of focus (but not limited to) would be Patient Services, Surgery/Procedure/Operating Rooms, Emergency, Ambulatory Care, Women’s Health, Diagnostic and Treatment, Caregiver, Service/Support, Facilities, Operations, and Critical Care.

The working group has recommended that “work areas” for heathcare systems are expanded (as opposed to non-heathcare infrastructure standards) and that the required permanent links for each necessary cabling established.

The standard will also support biomedical systems (RFID, BAS, nurse call, security, access control, pharmaceutical inventory, etc.) that use, or have the potential to use, IP based infrastructure systems.

This standard is developed by the TR.42 Premises Telecommunications Cabling TR-42.1 Commercial Building Cabling Subcommittee.

NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology) and MEL (Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory) has developed an open source test tool for Industrial Ethernet called Industrial Ethernet Network Performance Tool (IENetP).

Available through Sourceforge.net here, it allows users to test Industrial Ethernet TCP/IP systems that require deterministic operations. The current version analyzes network traffic and performance of a device on ODVA’s Ethernet/IP network only but NIST has said to be releasing additional versions for other Industrial Ethernet types (release date unavailable).

Test Tool for Industrial Ethernet Network Performance document (distributed by ISA)
NIST test tool download (Sourceforge.net)

I am surprised that it has taken this long for someone to come out with a SCADA iPhone app. Sweet William Automation has come out with an app interface (called SCADAMobile) to access and monitor tag variables/ memory of PLCs via the iPhone. This will allow any plant engineer to know the state of their industrial processes and for PLC programmers to have instant access to their systems.
(more…)

ISA18, the Standard for Instrument Signals and Alarms has been around (but rather dormant) since the 2003. Saying that, the standard has experienced a revival this year… the ANSI/ISA-18.2-2009 standard was finally approved on June 12, 2009 (ISA board) and June 23, 2009 (ANSI) respectively.

What is ISA18?

ISA18 is the standard and guideline for alarm systems including annunciators, process automation systems, and the general development, design, installation, and management of alarm systems in the process industries. It’s main purpose is to establish terminology and practices for alarm systems, including the definition, design, installation, operation, maintenance and modification and work processes recommended to effectively maintain an alarm system over time.

ANSI/ISA-18.1-1979(R2004), Annunciator Sequences and Specifications. This standard is primarily for use with electrical annunciators that call attention to abnormal process conditions by the use of individual illuminated visual displays and audible devices. Annunciators can range from a single annunciator cabinet, to complex annunciator systems with many lamp cabinets and remote logic cabinets. The sequence designations provided can be used to describe basic annunciator sequences and also many sequence variations.

ANSI/ISA-18.2-2009, Management of Alarm Systems in the Process Industries. This standard provides requirements and recomendations for the activities of the alarm management lifecyle. Lifecycle stages include philosophy, identification, rationalization, detail design, implementation, operation, maintenance, monitoring & assessment, management of change, and audit.

Update: For those of you who are within the Berks County and Lehigh Valley, PA area, the ISA Lehigh Valley Section is holding a free presentation of ISA18 (by Todd Stauffer, exida) on September 10th. More details on the event here. Registration is necessary; Members/ Non-members are welcome.

This article is an interesting way of how someone can steal data though electrical outlets . Demonstrated at Black Hat 2009 by Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco of network security consultancy Inverse Path, it shows how easy it is to steal data without expensive equipment i.e. with just an electrical grid and line of sight of the machine/ computer in question. (more…)