CONTROLLING COMMUNICATION AMONG MULTIPLE INDUSTRIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS

• US 20120331104A1
• Filed: 09/06/2012
• Published: 12/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 04/19/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Generac Power Systems Incorporated (Generac Holdings Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Akiyama, Kazuhito, Kudo, Michiharu, Takahashi, Hitomi, Uramoto, Naohiko
• Granted Patent: US 8,732,270 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/217
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1408 by monitoring network traffic monitoring network traffic per se H04L43/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks

Abstract

A communication control method and system for controlling communication among multiple industrial control systems connected via a network. The communication control system includes: a communication relay apparatus for relaying communication between at least two of multiple industrial control systems; a monitoring section for monitoring the multiple industrial control systems; and a control section for switching, if the monitoring section detects an anomaly from at least one of the multiple industrial control systems, communication between an industrial control system detected with an anomaly and a second industrial control system so that the communication is performed via the communication relay apparatus.

Claims

1. A communication control method for controlling communication among multiple industrial control systems connected via a network, the communication control method comprising the steps of:

monitoring multiple industrial control systems;

relaying communication between at least two of said multiple industrial control systems; and

switching, if an anomaly of at least one of said multiple industrial control systems is detected, communication between an industrial control system detected with said anomaly and a second industrial control system so that said communication is performed via a communication relay apparatus,

wherein at least one of the steps is carried out by using a computer device.

2. A computer readable storage medium tangibly embodying a computer readable program code having computer readable instructions which when implemented, cause a computer to carry out the steps of claim 1.