The major Standards Development Organizations OPC Foundation, PROFIBUS & PROFINET International, ODVA, and, FieldComm Group announce the release of the first Whitepaper of their joint working group entitled Industrial Ethernet Security Harmonization Group (IESHG).
The IESHG meets on a regular basis to discuss security topics in the industrial automation context. The goal of the working group is the alignment of industrial ethernet security concepts, so that end users of the protocols have less complexity when using security in their automation systems. The first Whitepaper was created to shed light on different topics of the security concepts of industrial automation environments. General concepts are explained in an FAQ, topics include public-key infrastructures, different certificate types of the SDOs, and certificate management tools.
Further concepts are currently being worked out, that will lead to further Whitepapers. The IESHG work group leader, Simon Merklin, Endress+Hauser, says: “The end-user and legal security requirements for industrial ethernet technologies accelerate at a high speed in these days. With the IESHG, we ensure that the security concepts of our SDOs lead to harmonized and easy to use secure solutions. With this great group of security experts, we pave the security road for technological advancements, like Ethernet-APL in combination with our industrial ethernet technologies.”