POWER April 2014 - 77

INSTRUMENTATION & CONTROL
Cybersecurity Concerns Encourage Upgrades
For regulatory and practical reasons, compliance with North American
Electric Reliability Corp. Critical Infrastructure Protection
(NERC-CIP) and other cybersecurity guidelines is now more critical
than ever. In addition to complying with current NERC-CIP requirements,
a new automation system must also be flexible enough to
take advantage of new security measures and patches.
An older DCS will have little or no built-in cybersecurity, making
compliance with current standards extremely difficult. In some
cases, the only way to make an older DCS secure is to completely
isolate it from other systems, which isn't an attractive option, as
it greatly interferes with optimal power plant operation.
By contrast, a modern automation system will have a host of
built-in functions that ease implementation and ongoing maintenance
of cybersecurity measures, including a high level of application
security, access control, and auditing.
Application security ensures that critical software such as human
machine interface (HMI) programs executing on the underlying
operating system will have priority access to key computing
resources such as processing time, memory, and bandwidth. It also
prevents interference among applications by limiting communications
to noncritical times.
Access control features help plant personnel enforce policies
concerning who is permitted to interact with the system and what
they are permitted to do. For example, an operator may have full
access to the HMI parameters, including the ability to change
setpoints, whereas maintenance personnel might be limited to
view-only privileges.
The new automation system should have sophisticated user acsimilar
type of study.
The FEL evaluation is a multistep process
and will include a comprehensive evaluation
of the facility. It will yield a comprehensive
plan to achieve success, a list of project tasks
with budget data, durations, and an overall
project schedule.
If a plant owner typically undertakes major
capital projects internally, then the FEL
may be performed by staff, assuming there's
sufficient automation expertise. But because
major automation system upgrades aren't
performed regularly by most power companies,
it's often more cost effective to engage
an outside service provider to produce
the FEL evaluation. That provider should be
independent of any particular vendor's automation
system to ensure that the best new automation
system for a particular power plant
application is recommended.
The right provider will have produced
many FEL evaluations for automation system
upgrade projects and will have extensive
power industry experience, enabling the provider
to work with internal staff to produce a
thorough study. The FEL evaluation will produce
a budget, show potential problems, and
provide a clear route to project success.
April 2014 | POWER
count management systems to facilitate access control such that
each user can be assigned a password that gives only the access
each individual needs to perform his or her job.
Auditing provides a centralized log of interactions with the
automation system so that all actions with the automation system
can be tracked. Auditing provides a way of detecting security
breaches and can act as a deterrent to inappropriate actions if
plant personnel are aware that their activities are being tracked.
In addition, auditing can be used to track root causes of incidents,
providing benefits over and above increased security.
Another cybersecurity feature to look for in a new automation
system is a network security perimeter system, used to restrict
access points where foreign software can enter the automation
system. A related feature is built-in hardening of the automation
system workstations, cutting off another access point for malicious
software to find its way into the system.
No matter how well the automation system is designed in terms
of cybersecurity, there will be an ongoing need for updates and
patches as new threats emerge. The right automation system supplier
will provide a means to test these changes before they are
implemented-a necessity, as some updates and patches can
cause problems with the operating system, the application software,
or between the two.
The complexity of implementing and maintaining cybersecurity
compliance will be greatly eased by selecting an automation system
that contains built-in security features and by selecting a
supplier that will work with customers to provide short- and longterm
cybersecurity support.
A DCS replacement is a major undertaking
requiring significant expenditures
and staff training. There are risks involved,
and in most cases there will be some downtime,
although it can be minimized through
careful planning. In some cases, the FEL
will show that a DCS replacement should
be postponed, maybe until the end of the
plant's useful life, in which case no replacement
is required.
In other cases, where replacement is justified,
the effort invested in the FEL evaluation
will often be directly proportional to overall
project success. Skipping the FEL evaluation
or performing it in a perfunctory manner will
increase risks and can lead to missed opportunities
for plant improvements.
The main items that should be addressed
in a DCS replacement FEL are:
■ Server-level applications such as humanmachine
interfaces (HMIs), historians,
and the like
■ Controllers
■ I/O
■ Networks among servers, HMIs, controllers,
and I/O
■ Field wiring, networks, and components
www.powermag.com
■ Interfaces to ancillary systems
■ Space requirements for new automation
system components
■ Demolition, installation, and commissioning
plans
■ Compliance with safety standards and
regulatory requirements
■ Alarm management
For each of these items, decisions must be
made including what, when, and how to replace.
For example, it may be best to replace
the HMIs first, often by installing the new
HMIs in parallel with the old ones, to ease
operator anxiety and reduce risk (Figure 1).
New automation system hardware will
need to be tied together with a variety of
digital interfaces such as multiple variants
of Ethernet and one or more permutations of
fieldbus networks. Interfaces to ancillary systems
will be required, some via networks and
others via simple hardwired I/O. All of these
networks and interfaces must be evaluated
for compatibility with existing systems.
New automation systems may require different
types of climate-controlled spaces,
which will affect demolition, installation,
and commissioning plans. Compliance with
77
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POWER April 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER April 2014

Contents
POWER April 2014 - Cover1
POWER April 2014 - Cover2
POWER April 2014 - Contents
POWER April 2014 - 2
POWER April 2014 - 3
POWER April 2014 - 4
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POWER April 2014 - 7
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