I have a project used by a couple individuals.
It has all the machine tags delivered to a tag provider.
Now I want to make another project that a lot of engineers can access. However, I don’t want them to mess up, nor access any of the tags that I had setup before.
Is there a way to duplicate that tag provider to a clone without taxing the plcs?
Or what is a good solution?
maybe I can just use security zones to protect my tags
If you are worried these engineers will break something then they shouldn’t have any access at all. Not sure I would call them engineers either. 
Give them a gateway backup and they can run on their own hardware. What are you afraid they will do?
Run a separate gateway if you can’t trust your designers. Anyone with designer access can break out of any restrictions you try to set.
the average person makes 7 mistakes an hour
mistakes are inevitable whoever you are
even the computer has Shockley’s equation that an election will get thrown right?
so I just want to protect against fat fingering and brain farts you know?
everyone wants to do good work and they are all smart people who do good work
I am just curbing the amount of possible impact from miscellaneous errors
Since you fall into the average person category how are you going to protect from yourself?
Do as Phil and I suggested, but that still doesn’t protect from destroying PLC/SQL data. You can’t protect against everything unless you just don’t let them touch stuff.
I export my perspective pages and tags before working on them typically.
I have a coworker also doing similar backups. Then the gateway is being backed up too.
There are some projects on there I am boxed out of too.
you are right, can’t protect against everything
thanks for help