LXI Security

By Jochen Wolle, TSEP

Introduction

Security is a critical attribute of industrial networks and Industry is giving a growing amount of attention to cybersecurity issues. Since LXI instruments are connected to company networks cybersecurity is also an important topic for LXI. This article gives an overview on the general security concepts and provides a summary of the current state of the LXI Security Working Group discussions and proposals for Test Engineers setting up LXI based test systems and IT departments supervising the company network.

We will follow-up with more articles on the technical details e.g. for the secure HiSLIP protocol and the secure web browser interface using X.509 certificates.

Levels of Risk Introduction

LXI instruments are connected to company networks. Depending on the test setup for the LXI instruments there are different levels of risk introduction:

Benchtop setups (e.g. peer to peer connection) w/o connection to the company network are per se very secure because there is no connection to the outside world. Test system setup with an isolated subnet are secure but the test computer needs a (second) connection to the company network. The most common scenario is a test system directly connected to company network, because in that case other test computers can also access the LXI instruments in the test system (e.g. for remote debugging). And last not least the most vulnerable setup is a test system with direct Internet connections (e.g. remote monitoring in the field). You can find the different setups and their pros and cons on the LXI Consortium web site.

Read more >>

IVI Web Forum Question and Answer:

Answered by Kirk Fertitta, Pacific Mindworks
for the IVI Web Forum

Note:  Offering an IVI driver is a requirement for all LXI-conformant instruments, something you will find in the LXI Device Specification 2016, Section 6.1. The IVI Web Forum is hosted by the IVI Foundation.
It was created to answer the more practical questions that arise when using the IVI Drivers to program test systems. To see a list of the IVI Drivers, click here. To view this question/answer in the Forum, click here.

Question:

Connection between class driver and instrument driver?

Hello, Where can i find the connection between the function "IviDmm_ConfigureMeasurement" to the driver-function? Means: Which driver function is classdriver function calling in detail?

I have the problem that executing the command:

IviDmm_ConfigureMeasurement (vi, IVIDMM_VAL_2_WIRE_RES, IVIDMM_VAL_AUTO_RANGE_ON, 1);

is logging "CONF:RES -1,1" in NI I/O-Trace.

But normally the -1 should be converted to the string AUTO.

(Thats what i can read in the file "CoAgilent34980A.cpp" in function „IAgilent34980AResistance_put_Range“

And because the driver does not convert it, the return from instrument is "-222 Data out of range".

This problem occurs only for the 2wire-resistance measurement when setting Autorange to ON.

Answer:

Ok, that's actually "correct", though a bit subtle since you're using an older version of MAX. Notice how in your screenshot that "IviDmm 4.1" is listed only once, while the others are listed twice? There are separate IVI Config Store entries for published APIs for IVI-COM, IVI-C, and IVI.NET. The driver supports IviDriver and IviSwtch for both IVI-COM and IVI-C -- hence, those appear twice. IviDmm is supported only for IVI-COM -- hence, it appears only once. That version of MAX didn't distinguish between driver types when presenting the published APIs, so they're displayed in a flat list. In newer versions of MAX, those published APIs are displayed in a much nicer grid -- with separate columns for the API name, the version, and the driver type (IVI-COM, IVI-C, IVI.NET).

Thanks to all our readers.
Bob Helsel, Editor
www.lxistandard.org

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