Safety & Security
Safety
At the inception of the system design there were no applicable standards, nor a responsible regulating authority, for what became known as ‘Automatic Guided Vehicle’ systems. Consequently, the control system behaviour was modelled in great detail using a structured methodology. All passenger interaction and vehicle movement events were considered and incorporated in to the design models. These logical descriptions allowed the effect of all events to be assessed during a vehicle journey. As a result, the control system behaviour can be demonstrated to be both as safe and efficient as possible.
Subsequently, the principles of the control system behaviour model were incorporated into the ‘Automatic Guided Vehicle’ requirements then being adopted as part of the ‘Rail Operating Group’ standards (ROGS). This design work was carried out in close cooperation with ‘Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate’ who have been enthusiastic participants in the safety certification process for the system.
Security
The system is hosted on an isolated network with External, Physical & Wireless network components. Access to and from the external network is restricted to a VPN via a Firewall with an intrusion prevention service. The physical network is protected by the use of network asset identification to ensure that only authorized devices can be connected to the various network switches.
The wireless network uses enterprise class Wi-Fi Protected Access and encryption, the system has policies and controls in place to ensure that only authenticated and authorized clients can connect and that all data transferred is encrypted. Network communication is monitored for any failures or anomalies. This also includes the use of network behavioural analytics to spot issues and potential zero-day exploits before they become a problem. As part of the network monitoring, specific control software is also monitored for performance.