Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) describes a collection of specifications. These specifications are used to standardize machine-to-machine communication (M2M) in the field of industrial automation. OPC UA enables the data exchange across operating systems between products from different manufacturers, e.g. between a HEIDENHAIN control system and third-party software. Thus, OPC UA has become the data exchange standard for secure, reliable, manufacturer- and platform-independent industrial communication over the last years.
In 2016, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) published a security analysis related to OPC UA. The specification analysis performed by the BSI determined that OPC UA provides a high level of security as compared to most other industrial protocols.
HEIDENHAIN follows the BSI recommendations and provides SignAndEncrypt, which exclusively features up-to-date IT security profiles. For this purpose, OPC UA-based industrial applications and the OPC UA NC Server exchange certificates for authentication. In addition, any transferred data is encrypted. This effectively prevents messages between the communication partners from being intercepted or altered.