System upgrade: MTL Matrix 8.2 integrates Wonderware platform, extends security
MTL Open System Technologies (MOST), a member of the MTL Instruments Group, has now released its Matrix 8.2 process control system that features extended integration with Wonderware’s System Platform 3.0 software and enhanced security.
“Our control solutions have always made extensive use of Wonderware software solutions such as InTouch HMI, Wonderware Historian (formerly known as the IndustrialSQL server) and InBatch (recipe management). The integration of System Platform 3.0 offers our customers major benefits: significant reduction in project engineering and deployment costs, easy expansion of existing systems, enhanced production and performance management reporting and integration with enterprise-wide business systems,” says Dave Reynolds, MOST marketing vice president.
MOST’s process control system, Matrix 8.2, reportedly uses Wonderware System Platform 3.0 software to manage and coordinate automatically the development, modification, and deployment of control application components. Each of the components or templates contain all the information necessary for alarming, trending, historical recording, and security for process control tasks including PID loops, motor control, I/O interfacing, and diagnostics. Graphical representation of these components is through a set of Wonderware smart symbols.
Wonderware System Platform 3.0 software is built on Invensys’ Archestra industrial service-oriented architecture (ISOA). The company says this enables plant engineers to design, develop, deploy and maintain process control and functional safety systems for a wide variety of applications. In addition, Archestra architecture enables System Platform 3.0 to offer one platform or toolset that can integrate plant floor systems with enterprise-wide business systems.
Matrix 8.2 provides enhanced system security, ensuring that only authorized users can make changes to the system. Security features have expanded beyond secure logons with different access levels for each user to include the following advanced features:
A trusted host table ensures that only specified MAC addresses may write data to the controller;
The controller can be password protected so that only those that know the password can make certain changes;
The controller supports a protected mode where configuration changes cannot be made;
A keyswitch can also be used to lock the controller so no other changes can be made; and,
Data is CRC checked to ensure it was modified by the workbench and not an outside tool.
These enhanced functions are designed to compliment Wonderware’s extensive security features. The Wonderware System Platform 3.0 model supports security down to individual data elements. System Platform 3.0 software reportedly enables every single object and attribute in a network to be locked down, both from a development and run-time point of view. As data travels through the network, information about who made the request, that person’s role, permissions, and in some cases, encrypted password information accompanies the data. This extensive data security is designed to enable compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11 with proper certification.
—Edited by Peter Welander, process industries editor, PWelander@cfemedia.com , Control Engineering Weekly News
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