Central to this is safeguarding and securing the overall system and procedural flows. Mining and Oil & Gas players must adhere to strict standards – not only self-imposed standards but also global, in country, and within the industry itself – to make their operations secure, safe and environmentally sound. As companies transition to more connected operations, policies and procedures for data access and management are more critical than ever.
In the mining and refining context, Process Control Network’s (PCN or process control systems – PCS) power critical operational components – providing deep and sometimes complex process information, in a simple and logical format for decision making. Merging processing and corporate infrastructures can help with system improvement and optimization by highlighting key areas for production improvements, shining a light on under-performing units and allowing for product quality improvements.
The use of advanced PCN procedures can not only increase profit margins, but also reduce emissions, minimise or remove safety and security issues and maximise the lifespan and maintenance regimes of operating equipment.
As the level of digitisation increases, so too does the attack surface
Process Control Networks are complex in design and implementation because they integrate with a range of corporate and industrial components. PCN’s perform sensitive and vital tasks for managing and handling critical infrastructure. It’s imperative to implement security in these systems because they are targets for cyber-attacks.
A successful and coordinated cyber-attack can incur massive damage to an organisation’s infrastructure. But it doesn’t even have to be a planned attack, it could be accidental. Outages, a safety breach, downtime, loss of production, environmental impacts could all be caused by accident.