Improvements in process control dependability through Internet security technology

The increasing use of the internet as a global communication media drives the development of new methods to cope with the deficiencies in reliability and security, inherently associated with the internet in its current form. Thus data integrity and confidentiality, as well as peer-to-peer authentication and non repudiation of transactions, are considered fundamental for a wide success of electronic commerce. As an answer to this demands, application of Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) gains momentum. This paper shows how this internet security technology may be successfully transferred into the process industry sector to provide valuable support for many of the current issues in dependable process control. The applications addressed reach from improvements in safe process control to reliability of communication and even commercial efficiency of operation, showing that a PKI is a valuable instrument to maintain the staffs confidence in procedures and communication, that migrate from paper to computer screens.