Monitoring communications flow in an industrial system to detect and mitigate hazardous conditions

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage device having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computing device to cause the computing device to:

• observe commands within an industrial processing system;
• determine a hazard level for a set of one or more of the observed commands using a simulation model that predicts the effects of the set of one or more observed commands;
• validate the set of one or more observed commands when the hazard level is less than a particular threshold;
• determine that the one or more observed commands is a hazardous set of commands when the hazard level is equal to or greater than the threshold, wherein results of the simulation predict that the hazardous set of commands lead to failure in physical infrastructure;
• generate a set of one or more mitigating commands based on determining that the one or more observed commands is a hazardous set of commands;
• and
• output the set of one or more mitigating commands to components within the industrial processing system, wherein outputting the set of the one or more mitigating commands reduces a level of hazard caused by the set of hazardous commands.

A system comprising:

• a CPU, a computer readable memory and a computer readable storage medium associated with a computing device;
• program instructions to observe commands within an industrial processing system;
• program instructions to determine a hazard level for a set of one or more of the observed commands using a simulation model that predicts the effects of the set of one or more observed commands;
• program instructions to determine that the one or more observed commands is a hazardous set of commands when the hazard level is equal to or greater than the particular threshold, wherein results of the simulation predict that the hazardous set of commands lead to failure in physical infrastructure;
• program instructions to generate a set of one or more mitigating commands based on determining that the one or more observed commands is a hazardous set of commands;
• program instructions to predict the effects of the set of one or more mitigating commands using the simulation model;
• program instructions to modify the set of one or more mitigating commands based on the predicted effects;
• and
• program instructions to output the modified set of one or more mitigating commands to components within the industrial processing system, wherein outputting the modified set of the one or more mitigating commands reduces a level of hazard caused by the set of hazardous commands,
• wherein the program instructions are stored on the computer readable storage medium for execution by the CPU via the computer readable memory.

A computer-implemented method comprising:

• predicting, by a computing device, an effect of a command within an industrial processing system, wherein the predicting comprises running a simulation with the command as an input to the simulation and the predicted effect being an output of the simulation, and wherein the command is output from a master compute system to an industrial controller or from the industrial controller to one of plural physical devices in the industrial processing system;
• generating, by the computing device, a hazard score of the command based on the predicted effect and historical commands;
• determining the command is a hazardous command based on comparing the hazard score to a threshold value;
• generating, by the computing device, a set of one or more mitigating commands based on the determining the command is a hazardous command;
• and
• outputting, by the computing device, the set of one or more mitigating commands to components within the industrial processing system, wherein the outputting the set of the one or more mitigating commands counteracts or mitigates the predicted effect.