exida explains Blog

Contractor Cybersecurity Training – Why Do You Need It?

Today, we are going to talk a little bit about Contractor Cyber Training.  What's in a good contractor cyber training course?  Why do you need one?  Why aren't policies, practices, and contract language enough? Today's operators of industrial production facilities frequently utilize contract labor.  This means a number of contractors have physical access to the...

Why Proof Test Coverage Is So Important For A SIF to Achieve Its Target SIL?

This is a question I often get asked when I’m teaching our FSE100 course on Functional Safety, when we discuss the purpose of Proof Testing and coverage.  It’s amazing how many end users assume perfect proof testing (i.e. 100% coverage), that is capable of finding, all the potential dangerous undetected failures.  It just isn’t the case.  There...

Alarm Management and the Great American Solar Eclipse

Throughout history, total solar eclipses have been a significant event. In primitive societies, eclipses were viewed with fear or as important omens. In the US, the upcoming “Great American Solar Eclipse” is creating much excitement. From buying “official” eclipse-viewing glasses, to paying $1500 or more for a hotel room in the path of the eclipse, the anticipation...

IEC 61508 Functional Safety Certificates – To Accept or not to Accept?

I get an email that includes a “certificate” of some sort most every week.  The sender asks “Can I accept this certificate?”  Or the sender might ask “Are these failure rates valid for the process industries?”. At exida, we have some specific criteria we use when performing third party independent SIF verification. exida will accept IEC 61508...

Outer Banks: How Could This Massive Power Outage Happen?

I, like many others, was stunned to hear that there was a major power outage covering the Outer Banks. Being an engineer, my instincts were to immediately investigate what happened and what steps occurred to lead to that point. Even before I did research, my mind was already asking “Why wasn’t there a back-up system...
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