Process Safety Systems

The Process Safety Systems Market Research study delivers current market analysis plus a five year market and technology forecast. The study is available in multiple editions including worldwide, all regions, and most major countries.

Process Safety System Market Endures Pandemic and Pricing Pressures

ARC Advisory Group research on the Process Safety Systems market continues to show that factors such as increasing regulatory pressure, standards compliance, and system obsolescence are all combining to drive end users to make increased investments in process safety. The market shows signs of recovery from the effects of the pandemic. With an emphasis on safety, cybersecurity, sustainability, and remote operations, the market for process safety systems continues to be stable, although supply chain pressures are particularly evident this year.

Process Safety Systems Strategic Issues

In addition to providing a five-year market forecast, the Process Safety Systems market research provides detailed quantitative current market data and addresses key strategic issues as follows.

Cultivate Internal and External Peer Relationships

SIS suppliers have worked to develop programs for mutual learning and support among their customer base, but many end users do not take advantage of these resources. Operating safer than your competition does not help the industry and learnings should be shared. First, end users should take steps to build collaboration, communication, and training within their own organizations, especially among peers at different units and plants that are running common automation systems. Second, they should participate more broadly in SIS supplier user communities. Many activities take place online.

Allocating time and resources to this type of activity is an ongoing challenge for end users who are often called upon unexpectedly to resolve daily operating problems or questions but can pay big dividends in knowledge transfer and professional (and personal) networking.

Make Cybersecurity Part of the Process Safety Lifecycle

If a cyber-attack can compromise safety in the physical world, we must view cybersecurity in the context of safety. Similarly, approaches that are taken in the world of safety to evaluate risk and design safer systems should be applied to the word of cybersecurity. There are many methods to evaluate risk in process safety that are consistent with those outlined in the ISA 84/IEC 61511 process safety standard. These include the use of risk assessment matrices that consider severity, likelihood, and consequence of risks to people assets, environment, and company reputation. Bowtie models are used to evaluate control and recovery barriers to manage various threats and consequences of a cyber-attack.

Layers of protection analysis (LOPA) is also used in process safety. In general terms, LOPA is a semi-quantitative analysis of hazard scenarios. LOPA considers things like the historical event frequency of the hazard, the performance of selected barriers in terms of risk reduction to determine if a safety instrumented function (SIF) is required and, if so, what safety integrity level (SIL) level should be employed.

Process safety systems and other control and recovery barriers have cybersecurity vulnerabilities that must be mitigated. These vulnerabilities lead to 'escalation factors' in the Bowtie model that must be addressed with the appropriate escalation factor controls. One approach for integrating the cybersecurity risk assessment into the HSSE risk assessment process is to focus on escalation factors associated with barriers that have cybersecurity vulnerabilities. One advantage to this approach is that it is already a part of the existing HSSE risk assessment process.

Integration of Cybersecurity Risk Assessment with HSSE Risk Assessment

The need for conducting cybersecurity risk assessments for process safety is called out in IEC 61511 Part 1 (2016), which requires that "a security risk assessment shall be carried out to identify the security vulnerabilities of the SIS." The requirement further specifies additional details supporting the risk assessment. While this is a needed step, there are potentially many other safety related elements in industrial systems that are subject to cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

A wide variety of HSSE control and recovery barriers are available for use. Increasingly, these barriers have software, compute, and network elements in their design. The trend of integrating these safety critical subsystems and assets with control systems will continue and must be considered in the context of the process safety lifecycle, and the cybersecurity implications must also be considered. Considering these challenges, it is recommended to change the HSSE Risk Assessment process to include an integrated, fit-for-purpose cybersecurity risk assessment.