Industrial Ethernet group EtherCAT Know-how Group (ETG) has introduced that EtherCAT meets the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) necessities for Safety Degree 2 with out modification.
As new cybersecurity and cyber resilience laws is rising world wide, requiring applicable danger assessments and proof of appropriate countermeasures, producers are being required to supply dependable statements towards the cyber resilience of their merchandise.
A key perform of EtherCAT that helps it obtain these new necessities is that EtherCAT processes Ethernet frames on the fly utilizing particular EtherCAT chips. This method structure gives a whole separation of the EtherCAT phase from an IT community to considerably cut back the assault floor. EtherCAT chips destroy all Ethernet frames that aren’t native to EtherCAT. The EtherCAT gadget protocol additionally makes use of the Ethernet body instantly, quite than by way of the Web Protocol (IP) — just about all malware relies on IP as a result of it wants IP for routing.
ETG added that EtherCAT can’t be attacked from the surface. An assault would require bodily entry to the EtherCAT phase.
Martin Rostan, govt director of the EtherCAT Know-how Group added: “We’re satisfied that EtherCAT already meets the necessities of the IEC 62443 normal and the CRA necessities for widespread functions with out the necessity for adjustments or extensions to the protocol.”
IEC 62443 defines measures and processes for the cybersecurity of commercial management methods and types the premise for the corresponding requirements of the European CRA.
For functions with exceptionally excessive safety necessities, the ETG is engaged on protocol extensions that may be activated as wanted and don’t require {hardware} adjustments. Moreover, the ETG is getting ready its personal certification authority in order that ETG members can uniformly signal and authenticate EtherCAT gadget description information and software program.
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