Secure data for the production industry
In 1999 the Adlershof company Prostep Gida took over the product line Open DXM, a platform developed by Prostep AG for the automated exchange of Unix based design data, and was assigned its further development. In January 2011 it became a 100% subsidiary of Prostep AG , whose partners include VW, Opel and Siemens, and since then has been operating as its development centre. Also another IT company in Adlershof, Innominate, has specialised in the secure transmission of product data in the production industry.
For four years, the Adlershof company Prostep Gida GmbH, a company for integrated database applications that emerged from the GDR Academy of Sciences, has been developing a successor to Open DXM in the form of its Global-X. The web platform Global-X utilises end to end encryption for secure data exchange over the internet. This scalable portal solution uploads the data to a server and keeps them there in encrypted form. When needed, automatic processing routines are executed in the background.
Global-X utilises for its data transfer a robust transmission protocol based on http. This has particularly proved its reliability over defect and high latency lines (with delays). In 2010 Global-X was voted into the top ten of industrial applications. Customers include carmakers and car parts suppliers like e.g. Porsche, Valeo and Takata. Managing Director Norbert Lotter is convinced: “Global-X is still at the beginning of its lifecycle. And it still has great potential.” At present, the software house is developing version 7.0 and setting up a leased platform together with Covisint, a Compuware company. The price for Global-X ranges from 15,000 to 150,000 Euros.
Also another IT company in Adlershof has specialised in the secure transmission of product data in the production industry: Innominate, which develops firewalls. “Ninety percent of them correspond to those used by private customers,” said Dirk Seewald, Board Chair. The differences lie in the processor chips, which are made for longer service lives in production IT and have to withstand severe temperature fluctuations. What makes the security devices from Innominate so different from its rivals is their invisibility mode. This prevents malicious scans of the network from detecting these devices that can be easily interconnected by “Plug and Protect”. The second product line run by the company is a hardware and software platform for the remote maintenance of machinery in a high bit rate VPN.
by Ulrich Hottelet