1. How Secure is your SCADA System? – Register now for President & CEO – GlobaLogixCyber Charles Drobny’s workshop. Security Strategies for SCADA. The US DHS states that 40 percent of all hacking attacks last year targeted the Energy Sector. Recent news has highlighted the vulnerability of the US Oil & Gas infrastructure to cyber attacks. In September of 2012 one of the major SCADA software providers had their network hacked by the Chinese. Theoretical access to clients’ process control networks was demonstrated. SCADA systems that control compressor stations, valve points, pumping stations, river crossings, gathering lines, intra-state pipelines and inter-state pipelines are prime targets. Whomever gains access to an Oil & Gas company’s SCADA system has access to the company’s production, their physical assets and their information. Whomever has access to their SCADA can endanger the health and welfare of their employees, contractors and the general public.
2. Realcomm Advisory: Business Process Automation – Commercial & Corporate Real Estate Evolve By Chip Pieper, ESI. When we gathered in Chicago last November for CoRE Tech, Jim Young, Co-Founder/CEO, and Howard Berger, Managing Partner of RealComm, introduced their vision of where intelligent buildings will connect with the enterprise in transforming the commercial real estate industry. “REvolution” launched the concept of using BPA (Business Process Automation) as the means necessary to optimize business processes in an integrated strategy, facilitating a new level of efficiency improvements for the organization as a whole. Click here for complete story.
3. Don’t Base Today’s Decisions on Yesterday’s Data: For many enterprise initiatives, nothing but the latest information will do. So it’s important to detect data changes and deliver critical information in real time for projects like determining up-to-the-minute inventory levels, consolidating sales data, or access to real-time shipment information. Whether you’re focused on real-time data warehousing or a high-availability data strategy, a data replication solution can increase agility, improve decision making, and avoid lost productivity. Check out this online resource center to learn how you can synchronize data, streamline migrations, and enable real-time analytics with data replication.
4. SGIP Plays Key Role in White House’s Green Button Initiative: When members of the Smart Grid industry first heard the challenge laid down by the Administration through U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra last September, they couldn’t have envisioned the incredibly fast pace at which events would unfold. His challenge? To develop a simple way for consumers to have access to their own energy usage information in a downloadable, easy-to-use electronic format. Now, just six months later, the Administration’s idea has been transformed from a simple concept to initial implementations that are already available to millions of consumers, and will be soon available to millions more. And the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) has played—and will continue to play—a key role in this process.
“Building on the SGIP’s success in coordinating and accelerating energy usage information standardization, we have worked with early adopters in California and other SGIP members to propel the Green Button into implementation,” said David Wollman, NIST lead for the SGIP Green Button initiative, along with his tech champion lead from the EnerNex SGIP Administrator team, Marty Burns. “And now we are working to keep the momentum going with a new SGIP priority action plan (PAP) to support the Green Button with improved standards, testing and certification, and reference implementations.”
5. DOE Issues Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Commercial Refrigeration Equipment Energy Conservation Standard. This email is part of a new effort by the Department of Energy to notify all interested persons of recently issued Federal Register notices and other significant program developments under the Appliance and Equipment Standards Program.
The Building Technologies Office (BTO) implements minimum energy conservation standards for more than 50 categories of appliances and equipment. As a result of these standards, energy users saved about $40 billion on their utility bills in 2010. Since 2009, 18 new or updated standards have been issued, which will help increase annual savings by more than 50 percent over the next decade. By 2030, cumulative operating cost savings from all standards will reach $1.7 trillion, with a reduction of 6.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 1.4 billion automobiles. Products covered by standards represent about 90% of home energy use, 60% of commercial building use, and 29% of industrial energy use.
