Full Report
Let's examine the technological advances, current state of virtual PLCs (vPLCs), challenges faced in industrial automation and standardization efforts.
Analysis Summary
# Main Topic
Technological advances, current state, challenges, and standardization efforts concerning **Virtual PLCs (vPLCs)** within industrial automation.
## Key Points
- **vPLC Definition:** The next major advance in PLC technology where the runtime environment is separated from physical I/O, potentially running on onsite servers, private clouds, or future public clouds.
- **Implementation:** vPLCs are implemented using **container** or **hypervisor** technologies (Virtual Machines).
- **Evolutionary Context:** vPLCs follow traditional (hard) PLCs and Soft PLCs, where the runtime is separated from the hardware but often dedicated to a single vendor's hardware lines.
- **Real-Time Performance:** Cycle time remains a crucial metric for vPLCs, comprising program execution time plus communication latency/jitter.
- Current State of the Artillery (Table 2): vPLCs can achieve sub-1ms cycle times when hosted Onsite, private cloud hosting achieves $\ge 1$ms, and public cloud hosting appears limited to a $10$ms or slower cycle time for some configurations.
- **Coexistence:** Hard, soft, and virtual PLCs are expected to coexist, with usage dictated by specific branch requirements, use cases, and project specifications.
- **Standardization Efforts:** Ongoing work under IEC bodies (e.g., IEC TC65/SC65B/WG7) is updating standards (like IEC 61131-3) to account for the architectural changes introduced by vPLCs, including concepts from trusted computing (IEC 62443-4-4).
## Threat Actors
No specific threat actors, campaigns, or malicious entities were mentioned within the context of technological evolution and standardization of vPLCs in the provided text.
## TTPs
No specific cyber attack techniques or Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) related to exploiting vPLCs were detailed in this report focusing on development and state-of-the-art.
## Affected Systems
- **Core Technology:** Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), specifically the transition to **Virtual PLCs (vPLCs)**.
- **Infrastructure:** Future vPLC deployments utilizing **onsite servers, private cloud servers, and public cloud servers**.
- **Implementation Methods:** **Container** technologies and **Hypervisors** (bare metal or hosted).
- **Affected Functions:** Systems requiring control and command, including logic, communication, motion, safety, redundancy, and visualization.
## Mitigations
Mitigation strategies mentioned focus on ensuring the stability and performance required for industrial control, rather than explicit cybersecurity defenses against external threats:
- **Ensuring Quality of Service (QoS):** Availability is flagged as most critical for cycle time performance.
- **Standardization Adherence:** Efforts within IEC TC65/SC65B/WG7 aim to solidify technical requirements, which implicitly includes addressing security through relevant standards (like IEC 62443-4-4 for trusted computing).
- **Functional Segregation:** Optionally separating hard/soft real-time functions, keeping critical functions like motion control on the shop floor separates them from potentially higher-latency cloud environments.
## Conclusion
The primary focus of this analysis is the technological maturation of vPLCs, driven by the separation of runtime from dedicated hardware, enabling deployment across various server infrastructures (cloud adoption). While the technology enables new business models (PLC-as-a-service), maintaining real-time performance (cycle time) across different hosting environments remains the key technical challenge summarized. Standardization efforts are actively attempting to incorporate these architectural shifts into future industrial control specifications.