gPROMS v3.3

Model Protection

gPROMS v3.3 has new features to allow creators of models to protect the model contents from undesired access.

Model protection is typically implemented when a model developer distributes models to a model user, who may be in a different part of the organisation or even in another company.

Purpose

Typically there are two reasons for wanting to protect models from access:

to protect corporate Intellectual Property (IP)
to prevent unwanted or unauthorised modification for quality control purposes.

Protecting IP

Models can be protected in order to allow them to be distributed outside the immediate organisation, for example to:

Accessing model protection

engineering contractors or consultants
universities or research organisations undertaking contract research
subsidiaries

safe in the knowledge that proprietary information is hidden.

Guarding against unauthorised modification

There are many reasons to prevent unwanted or unauthorised modification, mostly related to quality control purposes – for example, to:

Unprotected (above) and protected (below) versions of the same library, showing how entities are hidden from view in the protected version

avoid incorrect or inconsistent results
prevent multiple versions of the 'same' model being in use
reduce unnecessary support by model developers
maintain control over which model versions are used throughout the organisation.

Details

gPROMS v3.3 allows a model developer to encrypt a model so that it can only be accessed through its Public Model Interface (for example, dialog box and icon) and specify which model attributes (for example, Variables and Parameters) can be viewed by a model user.

The protection applies at a gPROMS project file level. Projects are encrypted using a password.

There are three access levels for protected entities:

PUBLIC entities are visible in results, and can be referred to by all entities in the model. This is the default access level.
PRIVATE entities are not visible in results (once protected), and can only be referred to from within model where they are declared.
RESTRICTED entities are not visible in results (once protected), and can be referred to by models or processes inside the project where the entity is declared, or by a project which is in the same package.

Licensing

The ability to protect model libraries is an optional feature, which requires a separate license key. In addition, the protected libraries can be put under license control. Contact PSE if you wish to use this option.

See the v3.3 release notes for more detailed information.

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