1 February 2002
Auspicious aim for cyberarmor
Ellen Fussell
Protecting control systems from cyberattack is just one of the goals of a new security subcommittee that will officially form this month. "With the ever-present threat of terrorism on American and international soil, governments are looking at protecting critical infrastructures, from refineries and pipelines to generating stations, railways, and ports," said David Teumin, cybersecurity consultant in Allentown, Pa. Teumin is taking the lead in integrating a control systems security subcommittee into ISA's new safety division—a move that couldn't be more timely for U.S. control systems security.
"We hope to link to news accounts of physical or cyberattacks against control systems, as well as to ISA- and government-sponsored standards and security activities," Teumin said. "Plus, we'll serve as liaisons with chemical engineering organizations like the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the Center for Chemical Process Safety, which is generating methodologies to evaluate security using techniques similar to hazards analysis techniques now used to evaluate process safety."
The new ISA Safety division will become official this month, with 12 subcommittees. Division director Paul Gruhn, safety systems specialist at Siemens in Houston, said it was only natural to make safety a "central repository for the information so we could have a broad focus rather than combine it with current divisions."
The new division will cover everything from control systems to fire and gas to software and security issues: discrete parts, transportation, and medical. "We're dealing with valves, software, control systems, offshore and nuclear systems. . . . You name it-all those things involving automation," Gruhn said.
The Safety division subcommittees will be writing a quarterly Web site column about the latest developments in those particular fields. "These subcommittee chairs can serve as session chairs at the ISA fall conference to broadcast this knowledge to the industry," Gruhn said. IT Return to Previous Page
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