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Experts advocate technology-driven downstream

Electrical and electronic experts have called on the Federal Government to make the power and downstream sector of the oil and gas industry technology-driven to boost efficiency in operations and service delivery.

They made the call at a webinar, organised by the Nigerian Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (NIEEE) on Sunday in Lagos.

The theme of the webinar is: “Implementing a Secure Industrial Control Systems”.

The National Chairman of the institute, Mr Kings Adeyemi, said the greatest problem of Nigeria’s industrial environment was a lack of use of the right computer programmes in factories.

Adeyemi also lamented inadequate power supply, slowing down the growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) in Nigeria.

He stressed the need for professionals to combine IoT skills with Information Technology (IT), to be able to efficiently handle cyber security for smoother machines interactions and operations.

“The big problem with the industrial environment in Nigeria is having the right computer programme to be used on the factory floor.

“There is also a lack of awareness on the need for IoT, due to lack of adequate power supply for seamless machine operations.’’

Adeyemi urged instrumentation and control engineering engineers to acquire modern IT skills to reduce cyber risks to industrial operations in the nation’s factories.

“In Information Technology (IT) and Operation Technology (OT), safety is the watch-word, that is why young engineers must add IT to their OT skills to give them a competitive edge,’’ he stated.

In his contribution, a member of the Lagos Branch of the NIEEE, Mr Michael Akan, called for adoption of technology in the downstream petroleum industry to curb leakages and corruption.

Akan said that instrumentation and control engineering principles could measure contents, pressures, temperatures and other parameters of petroleum products in storage tanks and their movements as well as ensure safety of tank farms.

“I have said it times without number that this is the only way petroleum products distributors can monitor movement of quantities in the storage tanks,’’ he said.

Other participants called for upgrade of control systems in the country to curb cyber attacks

The guest lecturer, Mr Abiodun Odewale an IT, instrumentation, control and automation engineer, said that cyber security was a major challenge affecting computerisation of industrial operations in Nigeria.

Odewale made slide presentations on how machine censors in factories interacted to take in and give out information through computer networks and how hackers took advantage of the loopholes.

He explained that cyber risks were escalated by activities of innocent staff who might be checking emails, Facebook or other engagements online while hackers could use them to get into main severs.

Odewale called on professionals to get both IT and instrumentation expertise because of new methods hackers used to break into computer systems from secured locations that the victim might not know.

He listed standard models needed in a secured plant environment, giving graphical illustrations of industrial IoT operations from levels one to four and how the professional could curb cyber risks at the next level.

“There is need to separate industrial and public networks to reduce vulnerability, reduce what passes through to the barest minimum, only initiate from your trusted zone to the less-trusted.

“Treat corporate network as unsafe because it has more vulnerability. Corporate network should not communicate with the business network.

“Your design must be secured through a good firewall to sieve data to ensure the right communication goes through the IT and operation technology,’’ he said.

Odewale also demonstrated different layers of cyber security perimeters and advised professionals to use data diodes to wave off intruders.

NIEEE has three broad sub-divisions of electrical engineering – power engineering, telecoms and ICT as well as the instrumentation and control sections.

 

 

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