In the last little while I have repeatedly encountered people in safety&security standardisation circles who are trying to equate IEC 61508 SILs (Safety Integrity Levels) with IEC 62443 SLs (Security Levels). I saw another instance yesterday, in a paper written… Read more“Security Risk” and Probability
IEC 61508:2010 is the latest edition of the general functional safety standard for E/E/PE systems. IEC 61511:2016 is the latest edition of the functional safety standard for E/E/PE systems in IACS. Last Thursday I gave a short talk (twice) to… Read moreSafety and Cybersecurity. Again.
Restarting a nuclear reactor is a complex and sensitive process. The process is essentially controlled through the neutron density at any point. The density is governed by processes which are fundamentally exponential in time, and is controlled by damping the… Read moreIACS Safety and Security Intertwined; A Realistic Example
The security of safety-related and safety-critical systems with components incorporating digital processing is becoming a major issue. We have seen partial control taken, from a remote location, of a car which is being driven. A major electricity outage in an… Read moreAn Observation on the Intertwining of Safety and Security
I own a largish building of about 360 sq.m., of divided use, some of which is my home. It was built about 110 years ago. Heating it is an issue. Heating and hot water cost me about 40,000 kWh per… Read moreThoughts on Sustainable Electric Home Heating
[Ingo Rolle is the Secretary of the German National Committee responsible for matters concerning IEC 61508 as well as the German National Committee responsible for matters concerning IEC 62443. This is an invited essay. PBL] IEC 61508:2010 is the international… Read moreSILs, the Safety-Related System Lifecycle and Security Level (Ingo Rolle)
There is a considerable challenge in raising the awareness of engineering-plant personnel about the criticality of the computer systems they might be using. We addressed some electricity blackouts at the Safety-Critical Systems Symposium 2016. In the 2003 North American blackout,… Read morePower Plants and Cyberawareness
There are a few different notions of risk used in dependability engineering. One notion, used in finance and in engineering safety, is from De Moivre (1712, De Mensura Sortis in the Proceedings of the Royal Society) and is (A) the… Read moreRisk
We do know that they don’t mix well. In an article in the Guardian about the floods in York, I read about the flood barrier on the River Foss that Problems arose at the weekend at the Foss barrier and… Read moreWater and Electricity
Alister Macintyre noted in the Risks Forum 28.83 that the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released results of their investigation into the October 31, 2014 crash of SpaceShipTwo near Mojave, California. The NTSB has released a preliminary summary, findings… Read moreThe Accident to SpaceShip Two
