What is the No. 1 concern when it comes to wireless solutions in the industrial world? While the answer might be debatable, if you’ve read some of my other blogs you know I feel passionately that it often comes down to one of two things – is it reliable enough and can I secure it?

Last month, we updated our article on the Dragonfly malware to announce the research results by Joel Langill of RedHat Cyber, a leading independent ICS security expert. Joel's research showed that the Dragonfly campaign focused on pharmaceutical targets, rather than energy sector targets, as had been previously reported.

If you are a controls or process engineer you will have noticed the direct involvement of IT while designing and deploying industrial Ethernet. While the networks and technologies come together easily, the language, culture and standard practices used by IT are very different. Indeed, they often pose a significant problem in a production environment.

The drive for productivity and high-availability manufacturing means you likely don’t have the time you would like to learn new things -even if doing so would ultimately save you time. In addition, you may be relatively new to industrial Ethernet networking and the equipment that comes with it.

My previous article covered part of Scott Howard's presentation on ICS Security for Oil and Gas applications from this year's Design Seminar. In that article, we reviewed some of the cyber security fundamentals discussed by Scott.