ICS Environment

Industrial Control System (ICS) is one of the common term that being used to cover some system entities that have similar functions and positions within the automation control environment in the organization.

Some of the core function of Industrial Control System (ICS) are as per the following:

1. Controlling the plant entities

2. Ensure the plant safety operations

3. Plant monitoring and surveillance

Industrial Control System Standalone vs. Networked

Industrial Control System usually being used in the critical industry and infrastructure such as Oil & Gas industry, petrochemical, nuclear plant, power plant, etc.

Industrial Control System can be consist of several devices and system with standalone platform or networked platform.

The standalone platform of ICS such as the Wind and Treloar system to monitor, analyze, control and determine the continuous operations of the oil and gas tanker loading activities.

The networked ICS platform such as the Delta V or ABB Bailey DCS that has the integration capability to interface internally and externally in order to build an integrated automation control environment for optimum plant production operations monitoring, surveillance and control.

Industrial Control System Typical Operations

The concept of controlling the plant that being performed by ICS can be simplified in the below diagram,

The concept of controls engineering that being used within the ICS environment can be represented by the above diagram. The main intention is to control the object by using the sensors as the sensing devices (for data input regarding the object that being monitored) and then controller will compute the best action to be taken based on the prescriptive condition (system configuration, parameter setting, flow algorithm, system philosophy). The controller then will govern the actuators to do the action as per the calculated decision in order to control the process into the expected condition.

The Human Machine Interface (HMI) has the main function as the interface from the ICS to operator/maintenance/engineer/admin of the system that can be used to support daily operations and some higher level activities (backup, restore, configuration changes, etc.). While the remote and diagnostic mainly used as the data storage management for the higher level action, such as trending analysis, predictive maintenance purpose, financial reporting, asset life cycle management,etc.

Industrial Control System Evolution

The industrial Control System has gone so many improvement and advancement. Following is the milestone of ICS form the networking and cyber security perspective,

1. Panel Based Controls

Push buttons, Single loop control, Stand alone system, No networks, No communication

2. Legacy Equipment

Proprietary network, Proprietary OS, No ethernet based communication (still proprietary), No intranet connections

3. Modern DCS

Open protocols, Ethernet everywhere, Windows/Unix/Linux platform (COTS OS), Remote configuration, Integrated system