Management of Critical Machine Settings for Accelerators at CERN

In high energy and high intensity accelerators as the LHC, the energy stored in the beams is orders of magnitude above the damage level of accelerator components like magnets. Uncontrolled release of this energy can lead to serious damage of equipment and long machine downtimes. In order to cope with these potential risks Protection Systems were developed at CERN including two software systems: MCS (Management of Critical Settings) and RBAC (Role Based Access Control). RBAC provides an authentication and authorization facility for access to the critical parts of the control system. A second layer of security is provided by MCS which ensures that critical parameters are coherent within the software and hardware components and can only be changed by an authorized person. The MCS system is aimed at the most critical parameters in either potentially dangerous equipment or protection devices (e.g. Beam Loss Monitors). It is complementary to the RBAC infrastructure. Both systems are fully integrated in the control system for the LHC and SPS and were successfully commissioned already before first beam in the LHC. This paper will describe the MCS architecture, current status and its operational deployment in the LHC.