What is an Engineer’s favorite software tool? It has got to be Excel.  When I worked as a Project Engineer I had spreadsheets for everything!  Reports, graphs, data manipulation, text parsing. I’ve even had a flight simulator.  Excel is a great tool for analyzing and manipulating data, so it’s no surprise that there are OPC based products that help get data into Excel.

What I learned the hard way, is what Excel is not great at… storing data.  It was manageable when I was only producing information for myself. I had a set naming format for the filenames, sheets and columns, so I could keep track of what data was coming from where, and from what time frame.  But once I had to start sharing the data out to other members of the project team, managers or end client reports things went down hill fast. Data getting changed in one version but not the other, ‘multiple versions of the truth’, missing or renamed files, and other fun problems.  

Of course the right answer is to separate the data from the information.  Use Excel as the reporting and analysis tool, and store the data in a correct repository, like a historian.  Which is why the release of the MatrikonOPC Micro Historian is such great news.  Light-weight, simple to use and cheap. No wonder it’s called ‘a historian for the rest of us’ J.  Of course you get data in and out of it using OPC, with full support for both OPC DA and HDA, otherwise I won’t be talking about it.

So for all those engineer’s out there with their data files in an ‘Excel of a Mess’, give the datasheet a look.

And before anyone comments, of course the answer to what is an Engineer’s favorite tool would be duct tape.

As Gary said in a recent post on tradeshow tips, this the event and conference season.  That means I’ll be on the road again spreading the OPC message.  This year I’ll be attending Emerson Exchange, ISA Expo and Rockwell’s Automation Fair.  Other MatrikonOPC folks will be showing up at Invensys OpsManage as well as globe trotting to tradeshow events in China, Indonesia and the Honeywell HUG in Portugal.  OPC’s reach is global!

At Emerson Exchange I will be presenting on managing risk when implementing OPC projects.  I have speaking slots Wednesday at 9:00 and Thursday at 10:00.  If you’re at the event, I’d encourage you to drop by, and if you can’t you can read all about it in the whitepaper Look before You Leap: Implementing Successful OPC Projects.

ISA Expo has always been a popular event for the OPC Foundation and its members, and this year is no different. I will be parked in Booth# 1335 with a few of the other MatrikonOPC folks.  Drop on by for a conversation or three on OPC.

Hope to see you all there.

Hackers.  That’s the headline for this recent article on possible vulnerabilities in the data communications to off-shore oil platforms.  It cites the fairly recent case of an IT contractor who was charged with sabotaging offshore oil rig computer systems. “Prosecutors say the contractor hacked into a shore-to-rig communications network that, among other functions, detected oil leaks.”  There are many, many offshore data communication systems out there that use OPC as a key part of their architecture.

Folks might be tempted to call articles like this sensationalism or fear mongering, but industrial professionals know the truth is all too real.  Too many systems still rely on security-by-obscurity or their firewall as their sole line of defense.

“Although the newest oil rigs, which cost upward of $1 billion apiece, might be loaded with cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controls a rig’s basic functions is anything but. Most rely on the decades-old supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, written in an era when the “open source” tag was more important than security, said Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the U.S. Interior Department. “It’s underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are,” he said. “It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail.”  

Although the safety of these systems is paramount, another important factor to consider is the economic impacts and lost production costs if these communication systems are compromised.  There are many things that can be done to make these systems more secure.  This article Securing Integrated Scada Systems against cyber attacks mentions some of them:  Network design, firewalls, Intrusion detection, and encrypted networks.  So what can be done for OPC communications in particular?  First is a good OPC network design.  The whitepaper Creating Secure OPC Architectures walks through some secure configuration options.  Of course using OPC security aware products such as OPC Tunneller and the OPC Security Gateway brings huge security benefits to the communication layer.

Are your OPC communicates secure? If you’re not sure, maybe a network assessment is in order. I’m sure there is a trusted OPC vendor you can call to arrange one J