We are nothing after our death. Let us donate our body organs for the poor.

Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work The moment you fear, you are nobody - Swamy Vivekananda

If you think safety is expensive, try an accident... - O.P.Kharbanda

Preventable accidents, if they are not prevented due to our negligence, it is nothing short of a murder - Dr. Sarvepalli Radha Krishna, 2nd President of India

Zero accidents through zero unsafe behaviors. Do not be complacent that there are no accidents. There may be near miss accidents (NMAs). With luck/chance, somebody escaped knowingly or unknown to the person. But, we can't be safe, if we depend upon the luck.

Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.

We make No compromise with respect to Morality, Ethics, or Safety. If a design or work practice is perceived to be unsafe, we do not proceed until the issue is resolved. - Mission statement by S&B Engineers & Consultants Ltd. http://www.sbec.com/safety/

Human meat gets least priority - A doctor's comment on accidents

CSB video excerpts from Dr.Trevor Kletz, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQn5fL62KL8

Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts

Dec 9, 2012

Internet addiction

Sometimes I feel that I waste lot of time in front of computer in searching for information which is not required immediately or any time. Like an aimless wanderer on the road, I keep surfing from one page to another page by using the links available and realize later that I spent more than one hour without gaining any thing.
There are people who keep on checking mails, posts, tweets, etc frequently and some persons even have provision for alerts though it may not be so urgent to read whatever is posted. This leads to stress affecting the health. It should not lead to compulsory obsessive disorder as we had life when all these were not available and heavens will not fall if we do not check the information so frequently. One should allot only limited time say half-an-hour or so per day to check these things and proceed with other issues to have peaceful life.
Once, we went on holiday tour to a place by going through a river for two hours and stayed in bamboo huts overnight, roamed around the area in day time and returned back. For more than 24 hours we were without any connectivity with outside world and it is an experience. The tour guide alone carried a satellite phone.

Oct 19, 2010

Process safety and stuxnet worm?

Of late a number of articles are appearing on impact of stuxnet worm on process safety and it is an eye opener for me. Though, I am bothered about safety of my computer at home and office, it never occurred to me that this can lead to accidents in plants which are operated from computers. Possibly, this is due to the fact that only limited sections are operated from computers in the facilities which I saw all along.
Now that I am aware of this stuxnet worm and its cousins that can affect process safety, I though what we can do to prevent such process safety hazards and following are some that came to my mind.
1. As the worm has to enter through internet / removable disks, these computers should not be connected to internet.
2. There should not be any provision to use pen drives, floppy drives, CDs.
3. Realtime protection from viruses, worms, etc should be available. For this realtime protection program loading, the server system should be under lock and key control of a senior officer. If it is affected, then this man only is the channel for viruses/worms to enter the system.
4. A realtime standby system operating on a different mode should be available (diversity in redundancy).
5. Backup should be taken in every shift.
6. The persons manning the control room should change their dress totally in the change room and enter with company provided dress before entering control room / server room.
7. Control room, server room, etc should be under surveillance.
8. As it is seen in the movie Die Hard (2?) of taking over all control systems by connecting from distance, the cables connecting servers with plant data monitoring and control cables should be secured and any attempt to interfere should be sensed and alarmed.
9. Like railway gangmen check the rail tracks regularly, cable system should be checked physically also by authorized staff.

Above are some thoughts which came to me for ensuring process safety from worms like stuxnet. I have to understand about how plants are operated from computers and what are their defence systems.

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