BS EN IEC 62541-7:2020

What is BS EN IEC 62541‑7 about?  

BS EN IEC 62541‑7 is part seven of the multi-series standard that defines the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) Profiles. The Profiles in this BS EN IEC 62541‑7 are used to segregate features with regard to testing of OPC UA products and the nature of the testing (tool based or lab based). This includes the testing performed by the OPC Foundation provided OPC UA CTT (a self-test tool) and by the OPC Foundation provided independent certification test labs. This could equally as well refer to test tools provided by another organization or a test lab provided by another organization.  

What is important is the concept of automated tool-based testing versus lab-based testing. The scope of BS EN IEC 62541‑7 includes defining functionality that can only be tested in a lab and defining the grouping of functionality that is to be used when testing OPC UA products either in a lab or using automated tools.  

NOTE- 

The definition of actual TestCases is not within the scope of BS EN IEC 62541‑7, but the general categories of TestCases are within the scope of this document. 

Who is BS EN IEC 62541‑7 for? 

BS EN IEC 62541‑7 on OPC unified architectureis useful for: 

• OPC Foundation members 
• Web services providers  
• Cloud service providers  
• Discrete manufacturing industries  
• Process manufacturing industries  

Why should you use BS EN IEC 62541‑7?  

BS EN IEC 62541‑7 OPC Unified architecture standard describes a number of Services and a variety of information models. These Services and information models can be referred to as features of a Server or Client. Servers and Clients need to be able to describe which features they support and wish to have certified. BS EN IEC 62541‑7 provides a grouping of these features. The individual features are grouped into ConformanceUnits which are further grouped into Profiles. 

BS EN IEC 62541‑7 lists OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) Profiles. The Profile table is ordered by Profile category and then alphabetically by the name of the Profile. The table includes a list of categories the Profile is associated with and a URI. The URI is used to uniquely identify a Profile. 

BS EN IEC 62541‑7 describes security related ConformanceUnits. All of these ConformanceUnits apply equally to both Clients and Servers, where a Client uses the related security unit and a Server supports the use of it. 

BS EN IEC 62541‑7 protocol and encoding related features that can be profiled and also describes base features related items that can be profiled. 

What’s changed since the last update?  

BS EN IEC 62541‑7:2020 is the third edition that replaces the second edition published in 2015. BS EN IEC 62541‑7:2020 edition constitutes a technical revision. 

BS EN IEC 62541‑7:2020 edition includes the following significant technical changes with respect to the previous edition: 

a) New functional Profiles:

• Profiles for global discovery and global certificate management 
• Profiles for global keycredential management and global access token management 
• Facet for durable subscriptions 
• Standard UA Client Profile 
• Profiles for administration of user roles and permissions 

b) New transport Profiles:

• HTTPS with JSON encoding 
• Secure websockets (WSS) with binary or JSON encoding 
• Reverse connectivity

c) New security Profiles:

• Transportsecurity – TLS 1.2 with PFS (with perfect forward secrecy) 
• Securitypolicy [A] – Aes128-Sha256-rsaoaep (replaces Base128Rsa15) 
• Securitypolicy – Aes256-Sha256-rsapss adds perfect forward secrecy for UA TCP) 
• User Token JWT (Jason Web Token) 

d) Deprecated Security Profiles (due to broken algorithms)

• Securitypolicy – Basic128Rsa15 (broken algorithm Sha1) 
• Securitypolicy – Basic256 (broken algorithm Sha1) 
• Transportsecurity – TLS 1.0 (broken algorithm RC4) 
• Transportsecurity – TLS 1.1 (broken algorithm RC4) 

e) Deprecated Transport (missing support on most platforms)

• SOAP/HTTP with WS-SecureConversation (all encodings)