Integrated Industry: Connected Factories, AI-driven security, IoT, Blockchain platforms and Azure-based solutions

  

I have been looking into Azure Security Center, Azure Connected Factory, and the OPC foundation that promotes industrial interoperability standards (https://opcfoundation.org/). The Azure Security Center is a great tool that enables the monitoring of edge devices like programmable logic controllers or advanced sensors. The Sentinel module is an excellent solution. It helps with predictive thread monitoring, a technique that appears to be increasingly important in most applications today.

Given that automation systems are increasingly similar to PC architectures, it is vital to be able to monitor the entire state of each machine to ensure adherence to industrial certification standards and security purposes.

In the past, a very sensible approach to ensuring smooth operation of complex systems was to keep backup hardware in fully configured and ready to go condition. In the event of a failure, the swap is painless and does not require costly configuration or programming. The downside is that you have to keep a lot of extra hardware and software licenses on site. Today, the approach is to keep “digital tweens” of any asset that needs configuration, programming, or data storage. The efficiency of this approach is that the fix might require restoration of the system to the previous state by pushing the image stored in the “digital twin” repository. Digital twins keep the inventory at much lower levels.

Blockchain Workbench is another exciting platform in the Azure environment for deploying Ethereum, Hyperledger, and other solutions. It is a move in the right direction to make sample solutions available on Github. With blockchain, all data is consistently stored and protected with all the characteristics that make ledgers appealing. Industrial automation platforms are increasingly supporting end-users in their blockchain implementation.