News | 18.10.2019
Cyber security – is that what you need?
Yes, that’s what you need, both privately and in your factory.
The European Cybersecurity Month is in full swing. And if you haven’t noticed it: In Germany, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is leading some far-reaching information campaigns. The citizen is the main target of Internet fraud. The campaigns are intended to inform society and also to raise awareness for the risks involved in using the Internet. Apart from the fact that the campaign is not exactly making the headlines, it is not only private individuals who are exposed to cyber risks. For companies in particular, security is a valuable asset and the basis for trusting customer relationships and sustainable profitable business. Production and factory outages and the associated loss of sales are also important risk factors.
As private individuals, many of us already pay attention to who gets access to our data: Smartphones indicate that an application is accessing a selected data source (“Google Maps wants to access your location.”). And who doesn’t know them, those paper slips that are stuck on a notebook camera. And yet the topic of cybersecurity rarely seems to be the most important one, especially in an industrial environment.
Do you know who accesses your machine data and when? Do you have an eye on which connections a predictive maintenance or servicing application establishes or can you ensure that certain usage data is not being made available? Many companies cannot answer these questions positively – often the necessary transparency is lacking; network structures that have grown over many years and the introduction of ever new software systems without comprehensive governance lead to the creation of data silos; smaller IT departments have limited capacities and can often only intervene reactively.
Industry 4.0 stands for the networking of machines, for data collection and intelligent use of data, for new services. But it turns out that security, despite existing offerings, is often left on the sidelines as an unloved child. We therefore repeatedly plead for very clear thoughts on the associated effects in good time before implementing new technologies. And when a production company implements a new application, it should be as transparent and easy to install it and control the corresponding data accesses as it is today for an app on a smartphone. No matter whether you need machine data collection (MDE) for your MES (Manufacturing Execution System), a maintenance module for your ERP system, a modern Business Intelligence (BI) solution or a predictive maintenance or analytics application.
At Cybus, every month is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, because secure data handling and data governance are central areas of application for our Connectware. It even meets the certification requirements of the Industrial Data Space Connector (DIN 27070), which contains important parts of the international IEC 62443 series of standards (“Industrial communication networks – IT security for networks and systems”).
With Connectware, you determine which applications are allowed to access which machine data. You have full control over your data at all times and will retain it.
Would you like to discuss your questions about data governance with one of our experts? Do you need suggestions for the development of a secure shop floor network architecture? Let us know. We look forward to an exchange.
