Honeywell launches new industrial cybersecurity services to address customer skills gap

MOSCOW (MRC) – Honeywell has added new cybersecurity consulting services designed to help industrial and critical infrastructure customers identify and eliminate dangerous security weaknesses, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The Honeywell CyberVantage™ Security Consulting Services portfolio now includes Penetration Testing, providing active “white-hat” hackers who exploit customer defenses in order to fix them. It also now offers System Hardening to reduce software vulnerabilities and assist customers in safely complying with global Center for Internet Security (CIS) industry benchmarks.

Delivered by consultants with expertise in both operational technology (OT) and industrial cybersecurity, the services help organizations lower the risk and possible impact of security incidents and improve their industrial cybersecurity maturity levels. Strategically, CyberVantage Security Consulting Services provide capabilities that enable safer connected plants, digital transformation, and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) efforts.

The need for industrial cybersecurity skills is particularly critical as the process industries face a growing worldwide skills gap, with research company Cybersecurity Ventures predicting 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions by 2021. As well, fines introduced by government legislation can cost non-compliant customers millions of dollars. Tapping Honeywell’s specialized knowledge of requirements such as industrial control system (ICS) security standard IEC-62443 and a variety of country specific standards can help avoid such penalties while improving cybersecurity preparedness.

The new Penetration Testing and System Hardening offerings expand the Honeywell CyberVantage Security Consulting Services portfolio of more than 30 services that deliver comprehensive cybersecurity expertise to industrial clients, from assessments and audits to remediation. CyberVantage customers have access to hundreds of cybersecurity experts, as well as multiple Industrial Cybersecurity Centers of Excellence located around the world to simulate, validate and accelerate their multi-vendor industrial cybersecurity solutions. The purpose-built, state-of-the-art facilities are staffed by Honeywell cybersecurity experts.

The news of CyberVantage Security Consulting Services was announced at the 2018 Honeywell Users Group EMEA Conference in Madrid, Spain, where hundreds of automation users and industry experts gathered to explore the latest industry trends and technology developments as well as share experiences and transfer knowledge.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Exxon Mobil Corp is considering a multi-billion dollar investment at its Singapore refinery, the company’s largest, ahead of new global shipping fuel regulations starting in 2020, reported Reuters with reference to a senior executive.

"We are currently assessing a multi-billion project in our integrated manufacturing facility here in Singapore," Matt Bergeron, vice president of Asia Pacific Fuels Business at Exxon, said at a bunkering conference.

"Should the project proceed, we plan to implement proprietary technologies that will convert lower value by-products into cleaner higher value products including 0.5 percent sulphur fuels that we believe will be the compliant option for the vast majority of the marine sector," Bergeron said.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is introducing new rules on marine fuels from 2020, limiting the sulphur content to 0.5 percent, from 3.5 percent currently, to curb pollution produced by the world’s ships.

The shipping and oil refining industries are scrambling to prepare for the shift and have made large investments to comply with the new standards since they were announced in 2016.

Exxon’s Singapore refinery is the company’s largest, with a capacity of about 592,000 barrels a day. Singapore is also home to the oil giant’s biggest integrated petrochemical complex.

"We have already made significant investments at a number of other refineries around the world in order to increase our production capacity of cleaner fuels with lower sulphur content," Bergeron said.

Exxon in September announced it was planning to spend more than USD650 million to upgrade the UK’s largest oil refinery, Fawley, on England’s south coast.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- AGC has begun evaluating an expansion of production capacity at its chlor-alkali subsidiary, Vinythai, as part of its initiative to expand its chlor-alkali business in Thailand, as per Apic-online.

The project would involve increasing the production capacity of polyvinyl chloride to 860,000 t/y from 300,000 t/y, vinyl chloride monomer to 830,000 t/y from 400,000 t/y and caustic soda to 590,000 t/y from 370,000 t/y. A final decision will be made based on the findings of the environmental and health impact assessments.

AGC, which acquired Vinythai in 2017, is currently undertaking measures toward integrating Vinythai with the nearby AGC Chemicals (Thailand) Co. to increase the synergy of the two companies.

The company has plans to install a pipeline between the two businesses to share chlorine production.

As MRC wrote before, in December 2016, CMC Biologics, a global leader in clinical and commercial manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies, coagulation factors and other therapeutic proteins and AGC Asahi Glass (AGC), a world-leading manufacturer of glass, chemicals and high-tech materials, announced that they had entered into a definitive agreement with CMC Biologics' shareholders including Monitor Clipper Partners, European Equity Partners and Innoven Partenaires, by which AGC will acquire 100% of CMC Biologics' shares.

Asahi Glass Co., Ltd., more commonly known as AGC, is a global glass manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo. It is one of the core Mitsubishi companies.
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MOSCOW (MRC) – Emerson announced new connections for Plantweb Optics, the asset performance platform for the Plantweb™ digital ecosystem, that will help organizations take the next step in their digital transformation to a more efficient, reliable operation, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The latest release adds connectivity to computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) to create, prioritize, execute and track actions. It also includes a native historian for deeper analysis, and additional connectivity to plant floor data sources.

Effective predictive maintenance strategies demand that operations teams can efficiently respond to the most urgent issues in the plant. By integrating with IBM Maximo and SAP CMMSs, Plantweb Optics becomes a single platform where personnel can see operational issues, collaborate on a solution, and manage maintenance response, parts ordering, scheduling, and work order execution – enabling a fully automated workflow loop for reliability from the prediction of problems to the execution of prescribed, preventative tasks to avert failure.

The native historian provides operators and reliability teams the ability to validate maintenance and operational response based on past asset behavior and assess future performance of the asset. Now coupled with the automated workflows to their CMMS, personnel can more efficiently respond to reliability issues that affect production and ensure critical issues don’t go unresolved.

Plantweb Optics is also expanding the supported asset classes by adding access to Plantweb Insight applications, another component of the Plantweb digital ecosystem. The edge analytics provided on steam traps, pumps, and heat exchangers is channeled to the operations team so they can determine effective strategies for these essential assets.

“Connection between operations and enterprise systems is a requirement to digitally transform your operation,” said Peter Zornio, chief technology officer, Emerson Automation Solutions. “By providing better workflows between systems and leveraging performance analysis, organizations can move away from often unsafe and inefficient run-to-failure reliability approaches to strategies based on insight and analytics.”

With this new release, Plantweb Optics expands its view of asset health - connecting more applications to one centralized location for better insight into asset and plant health. The asset performance platform helps customers improve reliability and promotes Operational Certainty, Emerson’s programmatic approach aimed at helping customers define and implement pragmatic strategies for improving performance.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Pepperl+Fuchs, a world leader in process automation and applications, launched a new compact industrial box thin client, the BTC12, featuring the state of the art RM Shell 5.0, the latest generation of thin client firmware for industrial-grade security and stability, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The BTC12 is a compact industrial box thin client for use in harsh industrial environments. Its low profile and high operating temperature range offer installation flexibility for automation cabinets, drawers in production, and in control rooms. An Apollo Lake processor supports modern operator workstation setups with up to two monitors. The BTC12 has two DisplayPort connections for dual video output, supporting 4K (Ultra HD) resolution at 60Hz. It also supports D++ (allows connectivity to HDMI monitor via a passive DP-to-HDMI cable) and Multi-Stream Transport protocol (daisy chaining multiple monitors to one display port).

As an industrial-grade product, the BTC12 is built on an aluminium chassis with a fanless design. Pepperl+Fuchs has eliminated all internal moving parts, and has enabled a safe operating temperature range between -20° and 60° Celsius. The shock- and vibration-resistant thin client weighs less than 5 lbs. This small, compact box can be easily mounted to a wall, mounted inside a cabinet or operate on a desktop.

"We have found that office-grade thin clients have a very high failure rate in industrial settings," said Kristen Barbour, marketing manager. "Our customers need a more robust modular unit that is reliable, easy to use and compatible with their existing equipment and software. The BTC12 is all that and more."

Pepperl+Fuchs introduced the new VisuNet RM Shell 5.0 remote monitor embedded operating system earlier this year. This latest generation software offers significant enhancements through a simplified touch-screen optimized user interface, advanced security features and Windows 10 IOT Enterprise LTSB. While the BTC12 comes pre-loaded with RM Shell 5.0., all of Pepperl+Fuchs' VisuNet products are available with the new firmware.
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