Whitelisting for HART Communications in a Process Control System

Abstract

A cybersecurity system for use in a process plant provides whitelisting of device specific and common practice HART read commands in process controllers and safety controllers to perform communications in a process plant that are very secure, but that still enable the implementation of advanced functionality provided in HART devices. A whitelist implementation application applies one or more whitelists in a security gateway device to determine if messages, such as HART messages, should be allowed or processed. A whitelist learning application automatically creates and configures whitelists through the use of a lock / learn mode, and a whitelist configuration application discovers Device Specific and Common Practice HART commands by issuing device description requests to specific devices, parsing the response, and communicating the whitelist configuration information with the parsed command types to the relevant process controllers and safety controllers for use in the whitelists. A userinterface enables users to interact with and guide the configuration process to provide for a highly secure system that still enables the diagnostic and other high level functionality of field devicesin a process plant.

Description

[0001] related application [0002] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62 / 904,229, filed September 23, 2019, entitled "Whitelisting for HART Communications in a Process Control System," the entire contents of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference. technical field [0003] The present invention relates generally to process control systems and security systems used in process plants, and more particularly to implementing cybersecurity in combined process control and security systems. Background technique [0004] Process control systems, such as those used in chemical, petroleum, or other processes, typically include one or more process controllers communicatively coupled via an analog, digital, or combined analog / digital bus to at least one host or An operator workstation and one or more field devices. Field devices, which can be, for example, valves, valve positioners, switches, and transmitters (eg, temperature, pr...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

As a result, control and safety systems employing high levels of security (such as any of the blocking methods described above) make it difficult, if not impossible, to read through non-implemented reads provided by device functions not defined by the generic commands of the HART protocol. data, while taking advantage of the numerous diagnostic and other auxiliary functions of HART devices used in safety systems, making these methods significantly less efficient in the process

Therefore, existing methods lack fine-grained features to meet the need to provide a large amount of advanced diagnostic and device information while conveying an appropriate level of security.

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