How does NetSCADA help You Manage?
Another good question! We design our products to facilitate efficient configuration and administration, including remote and centralized administration capabilities. Additionally, NetSCADA makes implementing security for the installed system fast and easy.

How does NetSCADA allow me to secure my SCADA network?

All NetSCADA software systems include our Authentication and Security for Automation Projects (ASAP) Security Manager program. The main function for the ASAP Security Manager is to provide services to make a NetSCADA server secure. The ASAP Security Manager program comes pre-configured with default user security groups for system administrators, system integrators, engineers, and system operators. These default user security groups may be used as is or customized to meet your security goals. Your user accounts may be assigned to one of these default profile groups, or new custom profile groups may be created and users may be assigned to one of these new profile groups. Additionally, the ASAP Security Manager allows you to setup global system policies for the NetSCADA server to validate and manage users attempting to login. These global policies may include client password rules, if users must be validated again by logging in to the NeTSCADA server, or by using your Windows domain user validation. NetSCADA uses 40 bit public key encryption for all data packet transmissions between the Data Manager and the NetSCADA Secure Client. Users passwords are encrypted before being saved to the database. Additionally, NetSCADA works with corporate VPN services and firewalls to keep unauthorized traffic out of your NetSCADA servers.

How is NetSCADA designed to work with wireless?

NetSCADA is designed to work with all media types and has special features that make wireless communications to remote PLCs & RTUs easy and efficient. NetSCADA allows each communications drop and communications poll to be configured individually to take into consideration communications time out time, media delays, and bandwidth. Additionally, NetSCADA is designed to help the developer to organize the PLC & RTU database to facilitate efficient communications when using limited bandwidth media such as radios and satellite. Click here to see how to set up NetSCADA for wireless communications media.

How is NetSCADA designed to make PLC/RTU communications efficient?

NetSCADA is designed to work with all media types and has special features that make communications to remote PLCs & RTUs easy and efficient. NetSCADA allows each communications drop and poll to be configured individually to take into consideration poll frequency, communications time out time, media delays, and bandwidth. Additionally, NetSCADA is designed to allow the developer to organize the PLC & RTU database to facilitate efficient communications when using limited bandwidth media such as radios. NetSCADA promotes organization of the PLC/RTU database to minimize the number of communication polls necessary to acquire data from or control a PLC/RTU.

How does NetSCADA help me manage my projects?

NetSCADA's built-in project management features include check in/check out of your application's process database points and devices (PLCs, RTUs, etc.), graphic screens and images, and project and system PLC/RTU RLL and documentation files. Additionally, documentation files such as Excel spreadsheets and Word documents that are related support documents for your automation systems may be managed with the project management features employed in NetSCADA. NetSCADA automatically generates an audit trail of the project management transactions as part of the system transaction log. So when one of your PLCs is down and you want to find out who last worked on that RLL file, you can, and quickly! Take a tour of our Web Based configuration demo to see for yourself how NetSCADA works to help you manage your SCADA and Automation projects!

How is NetSCADA designed to make configuration easy and efficient?

NetSCADA is designed to allow the system integrator to simply enter the system devices (devices are PLCs, RTUs, etc.) and their process database points to get a system up and running. Absolutely no custom scripts are necessary for a system to be operational. All of the usual necessary SCADA and HMI functionality is built in the application. This functionality includes such features as ad-hoc historical trend pages, pre-configured dialogs for things such as issuing a command or setpoint to a device, and setting high/low limit alarms, etc. Drawing graphic pages (NetSCADA calls them graphic forms) is up to the user as the system may be operated from the text process database grid and NetSCADA Secure Client device database tree may be used for system navigation. Standard graphic forms may be developed and are re-useable by default. Graphic images used can be Internet friendly JPEG and GIF format thereby conserving precious bandwidth. NetSCADA ships with a collection of standard graphic images which may be used in your applications. Additionally, you may add your own graphic images to the system. NetSCADA's device database tree is designed to organize the device (PLC & RTU) database to facilitate efficient communications when using limited bandwidth media such as radios. NetSCADA promotes organization of the PLC/RTU device database to minimize the number of communication polls necessary to acquire data from or control a PLC/RTU. Additionally, NetSCADA promotes organization of the device's process database by use of its built-in database grid with built-in features such as sort and in-place editing. This is only a small list of features that make NetSCADA the easiest and most efficient to configure and administrate SCADA/HMI application on the market today. Take a tour of our Web Based configuration demo to see for yourself how NetSCADA can work for you!

How does NetSCADA help me with my efforts towards standardization?

NetSCADA allows you to use a standard open source SQL Windows database for both the application's process and historical database. Additionally, NetSCADA allows copy and paste of SCADA real time and historical data to other Windows applications such as Microsoft's Excel. Additionally, NetSCADA may employs OPC compliant communications driver support. If your PLC/RTU manufacturer has an OPC communications driver available for their system you may use that OPC driver with NetSCADA's Scan Manager module. Or, check with us for a list of known OPC drivers for common PLC and RTU equipment. NetSCADA also provides a method to customize how the system operates by means of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) like scripting in the rare event that the canned functionality does not meet the customer's needs.

How is NetSCADA designed to allow my system to grow over time?

NetSCADA software systems are especially designed to allow your SCADA/HMI application to grow with your business. NetSCADA HMI may be upgraded to the Client/Server and Enterprise or Enterprise Web versions of the product to add client seats, capacity, and functionality to your system without any rework of databases or graphics. Databases, screens, user libraries, applications, and scripts are easily ported across the various implementations of the product. Additionally, NetSCADA's modular design allows very large systems to be distributed across several PCs. NetSCADA's scalable design allows you to start small and build your application as your business grows.

How does NetSCADA's Internet capability help me?

NetSCADA’s software systems are designed to fit both in a computing infrastructure based on the Internet as well as most commonly utilized business networks. NetSCADA Enterprise allows you to securely and economically distribute SCADA capability to users via the public Internet. This capability will allow you to efficiently disseminate process or factory floor real-time information throughout your enterprise, even beyond your corporate firewalls-AND do it securely. NetSCADA makes this critical information available to people who need to make timely business decisions quickly and efficiently and accomplish it in a secure manner by using both business network and Internet technologies. So, if your staff professionals need access to this type of data, even if they are at home or on the road, take a test drive of NetSCADA Enterprise at our demo page and see how it can be accomplished.

How is NetSCADA designed to make Historical Trending efficient?

NetSCADA is designed to minimize the effort to implement an efficient historical archiving strategy and has special features that make organizing historical data easy and efficient. NetSCADA allows each poll of a PLC or RTU to be configured individually for the interval for recording historical data for points collected by that poll. This allows high poll rates without bloating the size of the historical database. Additionally, deadband controls on each historical point allow the historical data for those points to capture important trends and transients will minimizing redundant data clooection. NetSCADA is designed to allow the integrator to implement a historical point by simply setting the historical property for the discrete or analog point to true. Click here to see more on how to set up NetSCADA for efficient historical data archiving.

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