Emerson deals for Calif. integrator

As integration becomes more of a key element throughout the industry, Emerson today acquired Napa, Calif.-based Bay-Tec Engineering.
Bay-Tec Engineering is a process control system engineering and industrial technical services company focused on project management, engineering and design (including cGMP processes), system integration, panel fabrication, installation and commissioning, calibration, and system validation. Terms of the deal were not immediately available.
“The acquisition expands our ability to address industry needs for automation engineering and project management solutions, particularly on the U.S. West Coast,” said Steve Sonnenberg, president, Emerson Process Management.
“Emerson’s global reach and technological leadership will help us to better serve our valued existing clients, as well as new ones,” said John Justus, president of Bay-Tec. “Our organizations are well aligned in terms of our strong focus on meeting client automation needs.”

Oil prices on wane, but stay vigilant

Surely no one thought it would last for long. Gas prices in the $1.40s? Come on, this is the land of opportunity, where the law of supply and demand rules.
OPEC knows that law better than anyone. So, with people ready to break out gas guzzling SUVs and crank up the heat a bit more for the holidays, OPEC is meeting this week to decide if they should cut production, which they hope would cause a spike in oil prices.
Yikes. Better fill up now while you still can. For a while oil and gasoline users stuck it to the man, with reduced demand. Plus with the recession acting out, folks are less inclined to drive around town as much.
With a barrel of oil down to around $44, which is about $100 less than it was in July, OPEC will meet Wednesday to discuss ways to stem the drop in prices.
While it is not a done deal oil prices will rise after this meeting, since OPEC has vowed to cut production quite a bit over the past few months and prices continued to decline. But that is because citizens of the world have gotten smart and started going green or looking for alternative fuel sources or just plain cutting down on their fuel consumption.
No one is against making profits, but the oil company numbers have been just obscene. It is now time to bring that entire situation back down to Earth and get people back out on the road again. But this time we all have to be smart about what we are driving and how we are driving. In addition, we have to continue to fight for alternative fuel sources. Just because fuel prices are lower now, we all know OPEC will do its best to see prices rise.
Talk to me.

New software service provider launches

Green Hills Software continues its growth curve as it launched a new software service provider today called Software Acceleration.
The new division of Green Hills will offer consulting services to make products run faster, use less power and require less memory. The company will leverage a library of advanced profiling and optimization tools.
“Although we are a new division, we have over 100 years of combined experience accelerating software,” said Larry Luke, vice president of sales who is heading up the new division.
The goal is to improve performance without having to change out the hardware, Luke said. One of the goals for the company is to offer a software performance guarantee, he said. “If we don’t meet agreed upon software performance objectives, the client will not have to pay.”

Security achievement at Green Hills

In terms of security, the big news Green Hills Software keeps talking about at its Technology Summit 2008 in Santa Barbara, Calif., is achieving Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL)6 + certification by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), a U.S. government initiative operated by the National Security Agency (NSA).
The system, which gained the certification in November, is the Integrity -178B operating system.
EAL6+ High Robustness operating system can protect classified information and other high value resources at risk of attack from hostile and well-funded attackers. This is secure by anyone’s definition.
The next level protection below EAL 6+ protects against “inadvertent or casual attempts to breach the system security.”
“Hackers are learning about the vulnerabilities every day,” said Dan O’Dowd, founder and chief executive at Green Hills Software at the company’s Technology Summit 2008 in Santa Barbara, Calif. “That is the bad news. The good news is it is now easy to determine if a computer system is secure.”
Common Criteria states that “EAL4 is the highest level at which it is likely to be economically feasible to retrofit to an existing product line.” INTEGRITY was designed for EAL7 – the highest level of security – and thus was able to meet the NSA’s High Robustness requirements.
INTEGRITY-178B was certified against the Common Criteria’s Separation Kernel Protection Profile (SKPP), requires security services and mechanisms to provide the most stringent protection and rigorous security countermeasures.
The gap between EAL4+-certified products and SKPP-certified products is quite large. While EAL4+ does not require examination of the product source code, SKPP requirements include the use of formal methods to mathematically prove the security policies, formal specifications, formal correspondence between design and implementation, complete test coverage of all functional requirements, and penetration testing by the NSA, which has complete access to the source code.

Think ahead: Build a system on security

Manufacturing is always looking to squeeze as much out of the process as possible. Increased productivity and lower productions costs means a hike in profitability, which is what it is all about.
But if someone can hack into your system, just how much profit do you think you will make? The answer to that question is simple. None. Manufacturers have systems and then they think about adding in some security.
That is where manufacturers have to start thinking a bit differently. The foundation for their systems has to be secure. Security can not be an after thought; in these cyber-focused days, it needs to be the first thing a manufacturer has to think about before putting together their systems.
“It is amazing how fragile we are underneath,” Green Hills Software Director of Networking Solutions Sue Hares said today at the Green Hills Software Technology Summit 2008 in Santa Barbara, Calif. “We have to include security from the ground up. Operating systems are vulnerable and firewalls do not solve the problem. You need to change the paradigm.”
How hostile is the world today? She asked. Over 150 million records were breached over the past three years, she said. “Cyber crime is becoming a for hire business that is as easy as point, click and hack.”
Sometimes to ensure a different outcome true leaders have to look outside their cozy safe comfort zone.
“Change will not come from within the industry,” said Dan Perrier, president of Automated Control systems Inc., a Vancouver, Wash.-based system integrator that focuses on the power industry. “Sometimes we have to model other industries. To force change in your industry, sometimes you have to look outside your industry.”
Rest assured though, change has to occur.
“Everything we have is based on computer systems and basically they are not secure,” said Dan O’Dowd, founder and chief executive at Green Hills Software. “They are in charge of everything in our lives and they are not secure. They are in charge of our money, our privacy, our democracy and our lives.”
Instead of building a system and then checking it for security, they should start with security then build the system, said Jimmy Sorrells, vice president of enterprise products at Integrity Global Security a subsidiary of Green Hills Software. Instead of building a system focused on functionality, performance and then adding in security, Sorrells said security first. A system should start with security then add in functionality and then performance. This way you have a solid base to add a secure future.
“Security is backwards; it is broken,” Sorrells said. “Security is the first thing you should do. You get security by building security.”
While it is easy to feel everyone is out to get you and you should fear everything, but it is not all doom and gloom for O’Dowd. “In 10 years we can have a safe infrastructure that we can bet our lives on everyday.”

Staying one step ahead of hackers

It is easy to point out the dramatic and scary cyber attacks that can occur to anyone at any time.
It is almost too easy. A French bank reported an employee hacked into the system and the bank lost $7 million; TJ Maxx was hacked and lost about 40 million VISA and MasterCard accounts; French President Sarkozy’s bank account was hacked; the White House network was repeatedly hacked into. These are all news event reported.
“These are just a few things,” said Dan O’Dowd, founder and chief executive of Green Hills Software during his keynote address at his company’s Technology Summit 2008 in Santa Barbara, Calif., today. “Most attacks have been covered up, so no one will know. There are plenty of dangerous people out there.”
It is now time, however, the make sure hackers can’t get in. There are hackers and scriptkiddies out there that a user will know entered the system, but the real quality hackers that want to garner as much information as possible and either steal data or money or anything else for that matter, will be invisible.
“There are people that hack in and you don’t even know about it,” O’Dowd said. “Almost any enterprise can be hacked into for as little as $25,000,” he said.
O’Dowd added there are four points of vulnerabilities: Human interface, servers, embedded end points and networks.
“There are thousands of vulnerabilities in your system today that won’t be addressed for years and hackers are learning about these vulnerabilities every day,” he said. “They stay one step ahead.”
Adriel Desautels, co-founder and chief technology officer at Netragard, agrees.
“That is what security is all about: Out running the bad guys,” Desautels said.
“Threat intelligence will not come from security companies. They learn after the fact. You have to infiltrate the hackers,” he said.
If a person or people have the motivation, there is no real problem getting into a system, Desautels said.
“Our average time to penetrate a system is between 30 seconds to a minute,” said the co-founder of Netragard, a security provider that employs WhiteHat security experts. He defined WhiteHat hackers as ethical and non malicious, BlackHat as unethical and malicious and GreyHat as a combination of the two.
He did say you can have all the technology you want, the human factor is a key to safeguarding any system.
“There is no patch for human stupidity,” Desautels said.
Other than the human factor, companies have to look at security in a different light. Instead of building a system and then checking it for security, they should start with security then build the system, said Jimmy Sorrells, vice president of enterprise products at Integrity Global Security a subsidiary of Green Hills Software.
“Security is backwards; it is broken,” Sorrells said. “Security is the first thing you should do. You get security by building security.”

In face of global recession, Festo chief sees growth

“We must differentiate by regions. I see 6-8% higher revenues in 2009 for our company in the Americas,” said Festo Chief Executive Dr. Eberhard Veit.
“As well, we expect a 4-8% up tick in Asia, and probably some growth in Europe though we are prepared for a decline,” Veit today told the 7th International Festo Press Conference in Delft, The Netherlands.
These would seem to be bold declarations in light of recent world economic events including the “official” announcement the world’s top consumer, the U.S., is in a recession.
The company bases its confidence, these numbers, and its predictions on direct reports from its customers. Festo contends it is in constant contact with its clients.
“Seventy percent of product development happens in the planning of the product, in the concept stage,” said Thomas Pehrson, general manager of Festo Netherlands, “so if you don’t involve the customer, you’re fooling yourself.”
Added Veit, “If we were to only rely on pneumatics, we would be facing a decline in sales. However, since we have electric drives and their take is increasing, we will more than compensate for any decline in the pneumatics sector.”
Festo supplies pneumatic and electrical automation technology primarily in Europe but has a strong global presence, too.
It also offers many industrial training and vocational education courses that help those in emerging economies work with automation concepts and products.
Last year it had sales of $2.15 billion (€1.65 billion) and Veit sees a 3% increase in 2008.
-- Nicholas Sheble