Cybersecurity Viewpoints

Once again, this year’s Hanover Fair lived up to its reputation as THE event to attend to see where our industry is heading. No other event or conference offers the same combination of presence of industry players and access to C-level executives.

Once again, this year’s Hanover Fair lived up to its reputation as THE event to attend to see where our industry is heading. No other event or conference offers the same combination of presence of industry players and access to C-level executives.

In recent years, the term “operations technology,” or “OT,” has emerged to describe technology used to manage and control manufacturing processes and other industrial operations. The imperative to protect these networks from cybersecurity-related risks further complicates the situation and demands operations cybersecurity.

Ignition by Inductive Automation is an industrial application software platform with tools for building solutions in human-machine interface (HMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).  The company announced the release of Ignition 8.

With many different devices, assets, and protocols on the rig network, it is critical that Rig Controls are completely segmented. With limited access for patching/updates, security devices must be virtually maintenance free. NOV researched various different devices to accomplish their objective, and eventually decided on unidirectional data transfer devices for remote monitoring, also known as “Data Diodes,” which physically ensure that only one-way communication occurs. After almost a year of testing, NOV reached a mature architecture that connects the rig controls to data diodes from Owl Cyber Defense.

Rockwell Automation introduced new industrial control system security solutions designed to help deliver built-in security based on globally accepted security standards to help protect control-level communications and overall system integrity.

On April 1, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation will establish the Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as a new company-wide framework dedicated to promptly and reliably responding to and reducing cybersecurity risks in products and related services in all divisions and branches.

In a recent ARC Insight, we examined the challenges industrial end users face when trying to balance the need for innovation and change with the imperative to maintain stable operations in their plants.  Although these challenges are not new, balancing innovation and stability has become even more pressing with increased digitalization and the need for improved cybersecurity.

Several ARC analysts attended ABB Customer World earlier this month in Houston at the George R Brown Convention Center. This year’s event featured a much stronger cybersecurity message, with products and solutions on display as well as a solid track of presentations and panel discussions on cybersecurity that lasted throughout the week. 

On March 18, PAS announced the release of its PAS Cyber Integrity™ 6.3. The new release of the company’s cybersecurity offering builds on the company’s ability to assess and identify risk with the addition of risk analytics, which operates as a continuous mechanism to both identify and quantify risks for multi-vendor OT (Operational Technology) endpoints.