Cybersecurity has become one of the primary challenges for IT/OT convergence. But the ongoing effort to integrate information technology with factory automation systems faces a wide range of challenges including connectivity, data collection, cloud integration, applications and updating issues.

Industrial cybersecurity has become “Job One” for manufacturers to enable secure use of modern IT technologies in industrial networks, and seamless communications between IT, OT and cloud resources that require highly granular security policies based on identity and context for people, devices, and applications.

Manufacturing medicines for clinical trials is a complex, lengthy, and costly process. As the global demand for medicine continues to grow, the pressure is on for the pharma industry to produce in ever-quicker cycles.

A defense-in-depth concept allows companies to leverage their existing network infrastructure and investment to build the first line of their network defense. Industrial intrusion prevention systems and security boundary concepts can also further protect OT systems from a wide range of cyberattacks.

Converging networking and security in industrial operations can enhance visibility within the organization, improve threat prevention, detection and response, simplify management, provide scalability and flexibility, and offer a crucial platform for IT-OT collaboration that can be built upon.

Cybersecurity is not a tick-box exercise but a fundamental part of grid modernisation in smart utilities and in smart city development. It needs to be a continuous effort from the beginning and then carefully considered at each stage of the design.

Establishing a complete and effective OT security program is a complex endeavor that differs from typical cybersecurity strategies. Ultimately, the goal is to maximize uptime by enabling operators to take targeted action to reduce and, where possible, minimize security breaches in OT environments.

IEC 62443-4-2 host devices are independently evaluated and provide a secure-by-design open platform for industrial automation systems. Installing IIoT software and applications on these host devices creates an IIoT edge computing gateway that meets the industry’s gold standard for cybersecurity.

Creating a secure IoT node begins with a “root of trust”, a small affordable integrated circuit designed to offer security-related services to the node. Examples are data encryption for preserving confidentiality and digital signatures to ensure authenticity and integrity of information.

Managing assets as part of device and update management. Due to the development of automated tools for identifying resources and threats, industrial asset management plays a vital role in many industries where security operations are required. Asset management is not just crucial for software and IT companies.