How to Improve Industrial Cybersecurity
Published on : Thursday 04-06-2020
In the global market, Industrial companies are more inclined towards the adoption of robotics and automation to enhance plant efficiency, expenses, product quality, and productivity. Such targets increase the advancements in industrial automation in the day-to-day internal and field operations of the manufacturing of products. This further leads the companies to expand performance and revenue levels.
Considering the adoption of advanced technologies in the industrial areas increases their susceptibility to cyberattacks. As per Deloitte's study, there more than 40% of manufacturing firms are facing cyber-attack along many of them face damage costs of over USD 1 million. These statistics reveal that cyber-attacks are a serious concern and the adoption of cybersecurity technologies in the industrial sectors is the utmost important aspect to consider during the incorporation of automation and robotics across the manufacturing line.
Need for Employee Training
Owing to the adoption and the use of automation or internet-based technologies are increasing the demand for the implementation of rugged security procedures to further evaluate the weak points of its system.
Industrial cyberthreats are primarily occurred due to unintentional errors or vulnerabilities in the internal systems. In addition, there is also a possibility of the malware-infected devices plugged into the network to cause disruption, either intentionally or accidentally. Thus, it is necessary for industrial personnel or employees to understand the importance of regular system updates and patch maintenance.
Cybercrime is not a static threat, where threats resolve once. It is necessary to carry out regular system tests and appropriate rectification of vulnerabilities and software should install to continue the operation without concern surrounding security and cyber threats.
Adoption of High-tech Detection Technologies
In the industrial sector, the rapid growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), which may be the key concern for the companies to adopt, as they believe AI can be used by hackers to manipulate or disbalance the plant operations instead of believing that it can enhance the production efficiency.
“Darktrace, a security company, uses AI and machine learning (ML) to create an end-to-end encryption pattern for the machines to detect irregularities. These concepts auto-identify emerging threats and rectify at the same time and block its access to the industrial control servers (ICS) based on rectification patterns involved in the back-end. Thus, AI and ML are primarily improving the security levels of interconnected industrial equipment, without human involvement”
The emerging industrial cybersecurity service provider in the global market include Applied Risk, Bayshore Networks, Claroty, Dragos, Indegy, mPrest, NexDefense, and Nozomi Networks. These companies are primarily focused to improve security practices based on AI and ML along with the regular updates to remain ahead of cybercrime patterns and improve security practices across the industrial plants.
In conclusion, the companies operate and manage businesses in the industrial sectors are expected to widely adopt automation and robotics in the coming years to advance their production capabilities and product quality, along with the need to adopt high-quality cybersecurity technologies. These technologies would base on regular updating operating systems, applying security patches, and restricting network traffic on ports in order to restrain the access to the path of the company’s ICS to the hackers.