BEHIND THE SCENES
Greetings from Casablanca
New sales office serves Maghreb countries
Phoenix Contact has founded a
new sales company in this western
Moroccan port and trading city on the
Mediterranean. Youssef Asmi, who
has been with the company for many
years, is in charge in the North Afri-
can metropolis. He previously worked
for Phoenix Contact Canada for
twelve years. Now, he has decided to
go back to his original home country.
Youssef Asmi as Country
Manager and the new subsidiary
will therefore become the point of
contact for customers from all three
Maghreb countries: Morocco, Algeria,
and Tunisia.
Roland Bent in
a new role
Chair of the Industrial Controllers department
The ZVEI - Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und
Elektronikindustrie e. V. represents the econom-
ic, technological, and environmental policy in-
terests of the German electrical industry. At the
end of 2019, the Automation division elected a
new leadership. In the future, the company will
be headed by Dr. Jan Mrosik, Chief Operating
Officer of Digital Industries at Siemens. He will
be supported by the CTO of Phoenix Contact,
Roland Bent, among others. He is now Chair-
man for the Switching Devices, Switchgears,
and Industrial Controllers division.
Casablanca is the gateway to the three Maghreb states of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco
zvei.org
Open like a barn door
Two billion devices are threatened by discovered vulnerabilities
In July 2019, it was announced that
eleven zero-day vulnerabilities were
discovered that affect the real-time
operating system Wind River VxWorks.
VxWorks is used in over two million
devices, mainly in important indus-
trial, medical, and corporate devices.
The eleven security vulnerabilities are
grouped under the name URGENT/11,
and allow remote attackers to gain
control of devices without any user
interaction. In the process, security sys-
tems such as firewalls are bypassed.
48
UPDATE 4/20
Due to the enormous spread, it is often
not easy or even impossible to update
all devices that run VxWorks. This is
why Phoenix Contact offers a simple
and easy-to-retrofit solution with the
mGuard security routers: the security
appliances are easily integrated into
the network and protect the VxWorks
devices completely from attacks
through all critical URGENT/11 vulner-
abilities.
twitter.com/mguardcom
The Phoenix Contact innovation magazine
mGuard products also secure on the top-hat rail