A Secure Gateway for the Cooperation of Information Technologies and Industrial Automation Systems

Promoting digitalization in industrial automation drives usage of new technologies, communication and information models. Thereby providing a platform for industrial automation to interact cooperatively with information technologies plays a crucial role to increase its digitalization and intelligence. An important factor in this interaction is security. The current automation systems do not cooperate in a high interconnected environment but offer a high security level. In contrast to the current automation systems, the future automation systems in context of Industry 4.0 offer high interconnectedness but require a security solution. The interaction deals with retrieving and processing data from the process control system and sending feedback to it. For retrieving data from automation systems different concepts are discussed such as the NAMUR Information diode. The goal of this paper is to develop a realization of a secure gateway for the interaction of information technology and automation systems. Furthermore, an approach to integrate feedback of information technology into process control is discussed.