Schneider Electric Enhances the Safety Capabilities of Triconex Tricon CX with Latest Version Release

Schneider Electric released the new Tricon CX v11.4 with enhanced cybersecurity features and performance.  The Triconex Tricon CX platform is a core solution of Schneider Electric’s safety capability portfolio, designed as a high capability, secure safety system that helps to enable connectivity between systems, assets and people, and helps to enable better real-time operating and business decision making.

Along with stronger cybersecurity features and enhanced performance, the new Tricon CX v11.4 features include:

• A new fault-tolerant 1GB I/O bus and fiber-optic adaptors that helps to allow for greater distances (up to 20 kilometers), increased system flexibility, and enhanced end-to-end performance. 
• A smaller footprint and more flexible architecture that, together with Triconex Safety Intelligent Enclosures and Tricon CX Universal Safety I/O, help to reduce system engineering and installation costs, shorten project schedules and reduce risk.
• A new version of TriStation that helps the Tricon CX safety system to be engineered and configured faster, including the ability to open legacy project files without the need to install, upgrade, or maintain the programming software; and the addition of HART containers that allow intelligent device configuration and detection.
• The all new Triconex Diagnostic Expert that helps to resolve maintenance issues faster and more accurately, including an enhanced diagnostic monitor that helps to make it quicker and easier to understand system health and identify issues; a new sequence of event recorder and playback for faster event analysis and identification of process upsets and outages; and high-speed data logging for quicker and more accurate resolution to operational issues.

Tricon CX is compliant with the IEC 62443 cybersecurity standard and is certified by TÜV Rheinland for use in safety applications up to Safety Integrity Level 3.  It is also ISASecure EDSA Level-1 certified, a major industry cybersecurity certification for industrial control and safety systems and components.  This has resulted in further security enhancements in Tricon CX v11.4 to mitigate more sophisticated methods of attack.

EcoStruxure, Schneider Electric’s interoperable, IoT-enabled system architecture and platform, is designed to deliver more enhanced capabilities around safety, reliability, efficiency, sustainability and connectivity.  EcoStruxure leverages advancements in IoT, mobility, sensing, cloud, analytics, and cybersecurity to deliver added innovations, including connected products, edge control, and apps, analytics and services. 

Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group, commented, “IIoT-driven algorithms can be configured to identify looming threats to equipment and safety, allowing operators to act before incidents occur.  By better identifying, planning and managing these operating and business risks, process manufacturers not only reduce the likelihood of unexpected production outages and downtime, they also have greater control over operational profitability.  This continuous, closed-loop approach is how solutions, such as Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Triconex systems, can help them to shift from managing safety as a cost center to controlling it as a profit center.”