TechHub: P&G Green Tech, Orbital Insight, WannaCry Returns

Procter & Gamble Tests Earth-Friendly Chemistry and Packaging

P&G this month debuted a refillable stainless steel laundry detergent container and highlighted Tide Purclean, which trades petroleum-based ingredients for plant-based alternatives such as coconut, soy and corn.

The showcase was part of the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council conference at the company’s Cincinnati HQ.

Procter & Gamble Co. is trying the refillable container in about 5,000 New York households.

“We’ve got a lot of work underway on how we reduce our dependence on plastic. The best thing we can do frankly is light weighting. So, we’re doing a lot of work on how do just reduce the total plastic that goes into a package.”

Todd Cline, section head of R&D for the company’s North American fabric care unit

Todd Cline, of P&G, said the company has many sustainable innovations available or being developed, according to WCPO Cincinnati.

Tide Ecobox, released in 2018, uses 60 percent less plastic. It’s also easier to ship.

Read more about P&G’s innovations here.

Orbital Insight Gives New Meaning to Big Data

Bloomberg profiled a company that uses satellites and machine vision algorithms to “interrogate the planet” for valuable data about crop yields, oil tanker locations and even shopping habits.

In a fascinating example of how the technology works, Orbital Insight engineers designed a computer-vision algorithm that tracked the number of cars in 250,000 retailer parking lots over four years.

In theory, the data could help retailers better understand shopping behaviors and correlate long-term trends against actual sales figures.

“You could see Black Friday, Christmas, back to school,” said James Crawford, Orbital’s founder and chief executive officer, according to Bloomberg.

For the profile, see Bloomberg.

Industrial Companies Could Be Vulnerable to Another WannaCry Attack

Microsoft is pushing an urgent software patch to try to head off a potential second WannaCry-type cyberattack.

What makes this update different is that Microsoft made the update available for Windows XP and Windows 2003, which it no longer supports with updates, according to Forbes.

Why? Many industrial companies still rely on those versions, so they are vulnerable.

Experts at industrial cybersecurity platform CyberX analyzed traffic from more than 850 operation technology networks and found that 53 percent of industrial sites are still running unsupported versions of Windows. 

Forbes

The May 2017 WannaCry ransomeware attack was among the worst of its kind, Forbes reported.

Ransomware attacks work by allowing hackers to lock users out out tie up sensitive data and then demand money in exchange for access to the affected data.

CyberX at Cyburgh

Speaking of CyberX, the company will be part of the 2019 Cyburgh, PA, Initiative organized by the Pittsburgh Technology Council on June 3 in Pittsburgh.

Look for Cyburgh and GrayMatter to learn from other cybersecurity professionals.

Two of Cyburgh’s keynote speakers are Scott W. Brady, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and Rob Karas, who is with the National Cybersecurity Assessments and Technology Services, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

GrayMatter is a member of the Pittsburgh Technology Council.

See the full event schedule here.

Transform 2019 is Coming Up

Don’t forget to sign up for Transform 2019, our annual user conference! We’re adding to the agenda every week, so keep checking back for updates.

“A lot of the systems that we’ve installed in our plant came from ideas from this conference.”

The Timken Company, IT Professional

Here’s a sampling of the breakout sessions and case study focus sessions we’re planning:

• Breakthrough Data Visualization Techniques at a Florida Water Utility

• High Performance HMI, WebHMI + ISA 101 in the Real World

• Securing Cloud Connectivity

• How a Paper Company Transformed Ideas into Operational Efficiencies

• From the Plant Floor: A Synthetic Rubber Manufacturer’s Plant-Wide Intelligent Assets Rollout

Those are just a few.

For more information and to register, click here.