This presentation describes our experience developing a new activity to demonstrate a process control engineer’s role and raise awareness of the risks posed by industrial cybersecurity breaches in chemical manufacturing facilities. Lamar University’s Process Control Laboratory has seating for four groups of students to operate distributed control system (DCS) automated experiments simultaneously. Typically, three student groups each operate an experiment through the common DCS which provides them with the typical functionality of chemical manufacturing facilities. This year a process control engineer student group was added. This group was assigned to diagram the DCS block configurations used to control the three operating group's experiments. After diagramming the controls, the fourth group was then directed to surreptitiously interfere with the DCS controls of the three operating experiments. Thus, the three operating groups must constantly assess whether the controls to their experiment's are being hacked.
The process control engineer group simulates cybersecurity issues for the three operating groups by temporarily modifying online parameters of the DCS function blocks that control each experiment. They choose from the following actions: (1) manipulate the operating group's valves or pumps using a digital or analog output, (2) spoof a reading for a digital or analog input, or (3) make changes to operator accessible items. If the targeted operating group correctly detects the unwanted interference and calls out the process control group, control will be returned immediately. However, if the operating group does not detect the changes or cannot determine what the control group is doing to interfere with their experiment then they must put up with the activity for up to five minutes. We found that these activities were extremely effective at capturing our student’s interest and seemed to be very enjoyable.
