News & Events.
exida Presenting + Exhibiting at AIChE’s 2023 Spring Meeting & 19th GCPS
March 02, 2023
exida's Denise Chastain-Knight and Patrick O'Brien will be presenting and exhibiting at the AIChE’s 2023 Spring Meeting & 19th GCPS to be held March 12 - 16, 2023 at the Hilton Americas - Houston, George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston, TX. Stop by Booth #530 during exhibit hours.
This year we will be showcasing some of our newest functional safety, alarm management, and cybersecurity products and services that reduce engineering time and minimizes risk.
The AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety is the year’s key technical conference for practicing chemical and process safety engineers, covering the industry's critical needs more broadly and deeply than any other conference.
exida Presentations Schedule
Tutorials in Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS)
Presenter: Denise Chastain-Knight
Location: George R. Brown Convention Center, 371
Date: Tuesday, Mar 14 10:15 AM
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
Tutorials in Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) International Conference – focused on promoting and advancing process safety management practicesPotential CCPS Tutorial session(s) include: Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS); understanding process hazards and risks; when to use which process hazard analysis method; inherently safer design, managing process risks; extreme weather safety planning; and learning from experience of senior colleagues.
Systematic Errors That Compromise Integrity of Safety Instrumented Systems
Presenter: Denise Chastain-Knight
Location: George R. Brown Convention Center, 370
Date: Wednesday, Mar 15 11:15 AM
Duration: 30 minutes
Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) are an important Independent Protection Layer (IPL) to mitigate risk. Where many safeguards, such as a Basic Process Control System (BPCS), are credited with one order of magnitude risk reduction (RRF 10), a SIS is capable of mitigating one, two or three orders of magnitude (RRF 10, 100 or 1000). Proper specification, design and maintenance of a SIS are critical to ensure that the SIS delivers the assigned risk reduction. Issues with SIS lifecycle management can lead to systematic errors such as underestimating the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) target, overestimating the risk reduction provided by design, and inadequate maintenance, testing or replacement. This paper will discuss some of these systematic errors and provide tips to avoid them.
Securing Automated Safeguards from Cyberattacks
Presenter: Patrick O'Brien
Location: George R. Brown Convention Center, 361
Date: Monday, Mar 13 4:00 PM
Duration: 30 minutes
Many various safeguards are required to mitigate the potential risks in process plants. These safeguards commonly include mechanical devices such as pressure relief valves as well as automated safeguards such as basic process control system interlocks, alarms, and safety instrumented functions. In a safety risk assessment these safeguards are considered to function independently, but in a cybersecurity incident, multiple of these layers can be compromised in a single attack. This paper will provide insight into several common points of failures attackers can use to initiate the common cause failure of control and safety functions including bypasses of safety critical components from operator workstations, shared engineering workstations or common laptops used for configuring both safety and control devices, and shared accounts for control and safety access credentials. Guidance will be provided on best practices for securing safety critical systems from cybersecurity attacks, and how the steps necessary to maintain the independence of automated safeguards from cybersecurity methods, can be incorporated into ongoing process safety activities.