Re: Industrial automation tends to be conservative --
And this is not helped by the IT wallahs pontificating from absolute ignorance about what Industrial Automation and Process Control systems actually do; and the constraints under which they operate.
It would have been so nice if the IT crowd did not run a mile every time Automation and Process people ask for help; or the odd ones who do respond seem to think they are playing with some trivial office network not a Critical Control Network.
Example - the insistence that it is more important to safeguard the office network than the Critical Control Network just for starters. Most factories/refineries/power stations/warehouses/ports etc can actually survive loss of office computer function and inter connectivity for several hours if not days or weeks. NO factory can afford to sit idle because the Critical Control Network is compromised and not working. If the factory is idle then there is no need for the IT department or any of their fancy toys.
Yet that is what I see in company after company; site after site.
This is the reality - no control system : no anything else; and yet we are lucky to get cast off rubbish with snide comments and pointless lectures.
Here is another reality - most Process Control and Automation engineers never wanted to be Network Engineers; hate having to be Windows Engineers and are fed up with the refusal by the IT crowd to try and understand what the issues are. So what do the IT crowd do ? Refuse to understand even the basics; treat the engineers like shit because they know little about IT especially what should be an obscure discipline called Network Security - whose proponents can not even manage to keep wannacry out of the world. Whose sheer inability to communicate with the real world means the IoT is a nasty horrible security nightmare. Who still haven’t done jack about securing household ADSL boxes SAFE OUT OF THE BOX. And of course know even less about Control systems than Process and Automation engineers know about general IT theory and practice.
So before the lot of you start moaning about the state of SCADA and DCS systems (and how many of you even know the difference; never mind what they do) I would suggest you look to your own house and start asking the Process and Automation engineers how you can HELP instead of running away whilst making snide comments.
As usual; the comments in this thread just reveal the IT sector’s total ignorance of what should be allied disciplines (yes Mr IT person; Process Control and Automation are two differnet things). </rant>