PLC Advances

Hello PLC World,
I have a question.... Can PLC’s be used with its programming language - to fight off or detect viruses & other various internet threats?

You should have several layers of protection before anything reaches a PLC.

I'd answer no, at least not in general.

They are used with their programming language... however, most conform with a standard so they are similar enough.

You can, however, put password protection in some brands... which is another protection layer.

I sell a lot of my trainers to software developers looking for ways to hack in over the Internet, they build 'security' software... their software works much better running on the network server and not running in the PLC directly

bots?

You and your trick questions again!...

KnowPuzzles1 said:

Hello PLC World,
I have a question.... Can PLC’s be used with its programming language - to fight off or detect viruses & other various internet threats?

Click to expand...

1. Are you asking if controllers can/could detect threats as a secondary function to them running a process? i.e. protect a resident process.

Or...

2. Are you asking if controllers can/could detect threats as a primary function? i.e. protect a non-resident process.

My loose change is on #1, but #2 could be entertained by taking your question at its face value.

Regards,
George

KnowPuzzles1 said:

Hello PLC World,
I have a question.... Can PLC’s be used with its programming language - to fight off or detect viruses & other various internet threats?

Click to expand...

Modern PLC's pass through ethernet traffic from various ports on the controllers through their backplanes to other ports on other cards. The PLC does not really control that traffic

A PLC could .. maybe .. be programmed to be a firewall-ish device if you had way too much time on your hands, and were not worried about throughput. I have never seen a PLC with access to the IP wrapper that data arrives in .... but I guess it's possible?

Detecting viruses would be a challenge.

Most PLC languages are a bit above assembly language, but still procedural. They are not built with learning algorithms as library calls. They don't have Giga-bytes of local storage to store virus signatures. And they don't have instructions to do deep packet inspection.

I think I have convinced myself that the answer to your question is effectively 'NO'.