LAPP industrial remote solutions focus on secure remote maintenance and network integration

Through a partnership with German company Helmholz, LAPP Australia is bringing a proven and quality range of industrial remote solutions to Australia.

The quality, reliability, and practicality focus of Helmholz ideally complements LAPP Australia’s capability expansion locally across technology solutions involving market sectors such as intralogistics, rail, energy storage systems, food and beverage, resource, and industrial processing.

“Industrial remote solutions include routers, industrial gateways and firewalls, accessories, and antennas, as well as secure digital portals for remote diagnostics and maintenance,” said LAPP Australia Industrial Automation and Networking Division Manager, Uthaya Sivanathan. “These solutions allow high performance and secure connections for plant, equipment, and systems to be operated remotely, which can often save hours of downtime with a technician no longer having to visit the site to begin diagnosis and troubleshooting.

“With all remote connections, cybersecurity is a major consideration, and Helmholz products are designed with a range of industry-leading features to ensure each connection is secure and isolated, so that a breach would not go on to affect other components.”

Global industrial remote solution goes “swimmingly”

Helmholz industrial remote solutions were used in a German ultrafiltration plant, where PLC-controlled systems had to be maintained remotely, and securely integrated into higher-level networks.

This complex plant is controlled via a PLC and an HMI panel, and only regular maintenance guarantees the high quality standards required of ultrafiltration for swimming pools.

Only regular maintenance guarantees high quality standards of ultrafiltration for swimming pools. Remote integration enabled by Helmholz technology achieves this more efficiently and securely. Image credit: Tom Bendix

The technology involved is highly relevant not only to swimming pool applications, but also to a range of other applications throughout industries including water and wastewater, food and beverage processing, chemical engineering, mineral processing, municipal and industrial process engineering, building and construction, manufacturing, materials handling, and more.

“The swimming pool technology was not a standalone solution, but part of a more comprehensive building technology environment,” said Uthaya. “Until now, several IP addresses were always necessary for the required integration. Often, these had to be changed at great expense during subsequent commissioning.

“In this example, they wanted customers to be able to integrate the control system into their own network easily and securely, without having to adapt to the ultrafiltration plant’s control system each time.”

“The solutions they chose were a REX 100 industrial router and the WALL IE industrial NAT gateway, both of which LAPP Australia can provide to the local market, including expert advice on which product to use for optimum results,” he added.

REX 100 industrial routers enable simple, flexible, and secure remote maintenance of Ethernet components and transparent data communication. All common engineering tools are supported via a user-friendly interface. As a result, the maintenance PC is virtually located in the customer’s plant. Data packets can be forwarded directly to the automation network.

The security requirements are correspondingly high. Data transmission is therefore generally encrypted via a secure OpenVPN tunnel. This technology ensures very high security for the communication path between the OpenVPN gateway. The Helmholz portal serves as the switching centre for the OpenVPN communication between the programmer and the customer system: myREX24.net. Both sides can establish the OpenVPN tunnel with it as outgoing connection. The firewalls or even restrictions of services are thus no longer an issue, because these only restrict the data traffic into the network, but not that out of the network.

Industrial NAT Gateway WALL IE

The highest cybersecurity standards must also be ensured when integrating the plant control system into a higher-level network. In this context, the plant network is regarded as a LAN (Local Area Network), the higher-level network as a WAN (Wide Area Network). To protect both effectively against external attacks, the LAN must be securely integrated into the higher-level WAN or separated from it.

This function is performed by the Industrial NAT Gateway WALL IE. Specifically, the component protects the networks by regulating exactly which subscriber is allowed to exchange data with which device.

The ability to route without mixing IP addresses is a unique feature of this system. The WALL IE works on the WAN side with a virtual IP address. Access rights are therefore reliably restricted to authorised persons. The automation network is protected accordingly. The IP addresses behind the WALL IE, on the other hand, remain hidden and are not visible from the outside. If the company network is now threatened by a hacker attack, the automation network behind the WALL IE remains unaffected.

For more information visit https://lappaustralia.com.au/en/remote-solution-3.

Top image: Helmholz industrial remote solutions provide secure remote maintenance and network integration. Image credit: Grünbeck Wasseraufbereitung GmbH.