Emerson is targeting perimeter security for the DeltaV distributed control system (DCS) with its new NextGen Smart Firewall, a purpose-built control system firewall designed to provide easy-to-install and easy-to-maintain perimeter security for all industries. More ruggedized construction, increased bandwidth, and role-based access provide users with increased performance and more granular access control, per Emerson.
The NextGen Smart Firewall features an HTML5 web-based user interface, simple setup menus, and pre-defined DeltaV application rules, per its maker, which notes that the ease of use helps DeltaV administrators and control engineers with no security or information technology expertise create secure connections for DeltaV applications.
“A critical element of Emerson’s vision of boundless automation architecture is secure connectivity between systems in the plant and across the enterprise,” said Claudio Fayad, vice president of technology for Emerson’s process systems and solutions business. “Emerson’s NextGen Smart Firewall delivers intuitive setup and interfaces to provide plants with access to a much wider array of technologies—from control, to reliability, to sustainability and more—without the need to maintain a dedicated IT presence.”
Gigabit connections support improved performance for applications that require higher bandwidth. Ruggedized construction is suited for harsh manufacturing environments, they add. Emerson’s NextGen Smart Firewall’s advanced features include:
- Virtual private networks—increasing flexibility and security for geographically dispersed networks
- Network address-translation—protecting network IP schemes and conserving addresses
- More granular user roles—administrators have full control, engineers may add or modify application rules, and auditors have read-only access to logs
