V1.1 GB

OPC FOUNDATION – www.opcfoundation.org

OPC Unified Architecture
Secure communication with IEC 62541 OPC UAOpen––––> 450 members
Platform-neutral
All areas of application
All connections

Productivity––––OVERVIEW OF OPC UA➞ OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is the newtechnology generation of the OPC Foundation
for the secure, reliable and manufacturer-neutraltransport of raw data and pre-processed information from the manufacturing level into the production planning or ERP system.
With OPC UA, all desired information is available
to every authorised application and every authorised person at any time and in any place. Thisfunction is independent of the manufacturer fromwhich the applications originate, the programming language in which they were developed or
the operating system on which they are used.
On the basis of a service-orientated architecture(SOA), OPC UA forms the bridge between thecompany management level and embedded automation components. ■Industry standard
Manufacturer-independent
Interoperability
Reliability

Collaboration––––––––

Device Integration
IEC 61131-3 / PLCopen
Analyzer Device Integration
ISA-95, ISA-88
MTConnect
Smard Grid
Field Device IntegrationEDDL and FDT

ADDRESS:OPC Foundation
16101 N. 82nd Street
Suite 3B
Scottsdale, AZ 85260-1868
USASecure concepts

CONTACT:

Security was a central requirement in the development of OPC UA. It is addressed in various areas:

Phone: (1) 480 483-6644
Fax: (1) 480 483-7202
office@opcfoundation.org

AUTHENTICATION AND AUTHORISATION OF
USERS➞ On establishing a connection, the user identifies
himself via• X.509 certificates• User name / password• or Kerberos
Thus all common user administration systems suchas Microsoft Active Directory are supported.
Furthermore, the access rights (for example for thereading and writing of values) can be specified in afine-grained manner per user.

INTEGRITY➞ The signing of messages prevents a third party
from changing the contents of a message.
This prevents, for example, a write statement toopen a switch being falsified by a third party and theswitch being closed instead.

INFORMATION:

www.opcfoundation.org

COOPERATION:➞ PLCopen➞ ISA➞ MTConnect
➞ FDT
➞ PNO
➞ HART➞ FF

Security concepts
Security was a central requirement in the development of OPC UA. It is addressed in various areas:

CONFIDENTIALITY➞ The confidentiality of the exchanged information issecured by the encryption of the exchanged messages. Modern cryptographic algorithms are usedfor this. In order to be able to cope with future security requirements as well, even stronger and more
modern algorithms can subsequently be added toan application without changing the protocol.
Different security levels can be selected according to
the requirements of the respective application. In
some areas it is sufficient to sign the messages inorder to prevent changes being made by third parties, while additional coding of the messages is necessary in other cases where the data must also not
be read by third parties.

MORE Informationwww.opcfoundation.org

AUTHENTICATION AND AUTHORISATION OF
APPLICATIONS➞ OPC UA applications identify themselves (in asimilar way to a user) via so-called software and­application instance certificates.
With the aid of software certificates it is possible togrant certain client applications extended access tothe information on an OPC UA server, for example
for the engineering of an OPC UA server.
Application instance certificates can be used to­ensure that an OPC UA server communicates onlywith preconfigured clients. A client can ensure bymeans of the server’s application instance certificatethat it is speaking to the correct server (similar to thecertificates of a Web browser).
The taking into account of these certificates is­optional, i.e. an OPC UA server can also grant thesame access to each client, depending on the userrights. ■