Engineering Blog for High Performance Insights

SECURITY BRIEF: CRA secure-by-default essential requirement through the lens of protocols that the device supports. Protocol security does not behave like a product property. Every industrial protocol that has added cryptographic protection — PROFINET Security Classes 2 and 3, CIP Security on EtherNet/IP, the OPC UA secure channel — protects a session, and a session needs two capable endpoints. The security a plant actually achieves is set by the least-capable peer in each re

OT SECURITY BRIEF: We look into the security aspects of the recently introduced i3X 1.0 (Industrial Interoperability eXchange) In June 2026, CESMII froze version 1.0 of i3X — the Industrial Information Interoperability eXchange — and shipped it with an implementation guide, an OpenAPI definition, a Python client, a conformance test suite and an MCP server. Forty-four technology providers have publicly aligned behind it. The specification is small, MIT-licensed, and by severa

We discuss MQTT relative to OPC UA. Not equivalents - each brings its own strengths and weaknesses to the OT environment

POSITION NOTE: Through EU legislated CRA (Cybersecurity Resiliency Act) scope is product level, efforts are made to assert compliance by way of systems architecture - will this assertion hold water? We explore this question. In late 2025, EtherCAT Technology Group consortium announced that its protocol meets the requirements of the EU Cyber Resilience Act. The initial statement, from the EtherCAT Technology Group, was carefully qualified — the protocol was said to meet IEC