Safety and security in process-industrial IT and automation (SSpiia)

Purpose and goal

Industrial automation systems are increasingly becoming autonomous, without direct human supervision, interconnected internally as well as with the Internet, as well as being mainly Software based. These trends put an increasing demand on solutions to establish safety and security to ensure that the often safety and business-critical systems behaves as expected. In The pre-study project SSpiia have studied safety and security with the purpose to lay a foundation for future projects and increased industrial awareness of relevant challenges and solutions.

Results and expected effects

SSpiia has resulted in a roadmap that identifies the key challenges the companies within Process industrial IT and automation need to address for efficient and effective handling of safety and security. The roadmap is based on industrial requirements and a an overview of the State-of-the-Art. SSpiia has additionally resulted in an application for funding of a more development oriented project, as well as a preliminary authorization framework for industrial control systems.

Approach and implementation

The project is a cooperation between research organisations and companies. The research organisations have been drivers in the project, with SICS-V having main responsibility for safety and SICS for security. MDH had a leading role in the development of the roadmap and the State-of-the-Art report. The companies have mainly contributed to the identification of industrial requirements, as well as to the authorization framework (ABB) and investigation of composable safety (VCE). Two project-wide workshops have been organised. Cooperation within the project has been excellent.