Internet Explorer Security Risks

Many experts, including government officials in Germany and France, have warned computer users against using Internet Explorer. While the publicity surrounding these events might accelerate recent trends of user migration from Internet Explorer to other browsers, it could also have some unintended surprises for Industrial Ethernet networks in factory floor applications.

For plant engineers, the Web browser is an important window to the Web-based management capability of industrial Ethernet infrastructure devices, such as managed switches and routers. A company or engineer that moves away from using Internet Explorer may quickly discover that a number of their industrial Ethernet devices were not designed for use with other browsers.

For users of Phoenix Contact industrial Ethernet products, browser compatibility is not a concern.

"Obviously, recommended practices to ensure security and performance in an industrial Ethernet network go beyond browser selection," said Greg Dixson, Automation Product Marketing Manager. "Industrial firewalls, VPN tunneling, redundancy and multicast filtering all play very important roles to protect both users and the network. However, since these features are typically configured on Web servers within the devices, it is critical that the devices themselves are designed for use with a wide range of Web browsers. Phoenix Contact's industrial Ethernet products are designed and optimized for use with all of the most popular browsers, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome."

Phoenix Contact offers a broad range of industrial Ethernet products, including managed and unmanaged switches, I/O, Power over Ethernet, software and wireless.

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