Secure approach for providing combined environment for owners/operators and multiple third parties to cooperatively engineer, operate, and maintain an industrial process control and automation system

An apparatus that provides a secure approach for providing a combined environment that allows a plurality of users to cooperatively operate and maintain an industrial process control and automation system comprising:

• at least one processing device configured to:
• create, in a secure platform, multiple securely-partitioned system sandboxes under control of at least one user associated with the industrial process control and automation system, different system sandboxes associated with different third parties who are not owners or operators of the industrial process control and automation system, wherein the secure platform includes a plurality of views defining an access level and capabilities of the third parties based on the location of a specific asset of the industrial process control and automation system but no access to the other assets in other locations;
• receive templates from the at least one user, each template defining one or more equipment configurations associated with the industrial process control and automation system;
• and
• provide one or more templates to each of the third parties, wherein the content received from each of the third parties is based on the one or more templates provided to the third party, and whereby the content received from the multiple third parties for the same type of equipment is used to standardize the one or more equipment configurations associated with the process control and automaton system;
• receive content from the third parties and store content in the system sandboxes associated with the third parties, wherein storing of content is based on the access level and capabilities defined in the views;
• and
• receive from the at least one user a selective activation of at least some of the content in the system sandboxes in order to place the at least some of the content into use by the industrial process control and automation system.

A non-transitory computer readable medium containing computer readable program code that when executed causes at least one processing device to provide a secure approach for providing a combined environment that allows a plurality of users to cooperatively operate and maintain an industrial process control and automation system, to:

• create, in a secure platform, multiple securely-partitioned system sandboxes under control of at least one user associated with the industrial process control and automation system, different system sandboxes associated with different third parties who are not owners or operators of the industrial process control and automation system, wherein the secure platform includes a plurality of views defining an access level and capabilities of the third parties based on the location of a specific asset of the industrial process control and automation system but no access to the other assets in other locations;
• receive templates from the at least one user, each template defining one or more equipment configurations associated with the industrial process control and automation system;
• and
• provide one or more templates to each of the third parties, wherein the content received from each of the third parties is based on the one or more templates provided to the third party, and whereby the content received from the multiple third parties for the same type of equipment is used to standardize the one or more equipment configurations associated with the process control and automaton system;
• receive content from the third parties and store content in the system sandboxes associated with the third parties, wherein storing of content is based on the access level and capabilities defined in the views;
• and
• receive from the at least one user a selective activation of at least some of the content in the system sandboxes in order to place the at least some of the content into use by the industrial process control and automation system.