Safety in Industry 4.0 – Are you prepared for the Automation?

With the rapid change of the modern world into an ‘Industry 4.0’ economy, it can be said that the change is somewhat similar to the Industrial revolution of the 18th century. Industries have undergone a significant change in terms of production and optimization of the whole process, things like machine learning; AI i.e. artificial intelligence and automation are the primary cause.

As the process is getting better and mature there is the introduction of cyber-physical systems, cloud computing, and cognitive/behavioral computing all this gives rise to certain specific problems which the industries are trying to understand in order to tackle these.

Between the entire process going on there is this basic problem that remains which is how these advances should be secured, how to have the resources to all this and which global standards are the best. When looked out for a solution the best option seems to be in the form of ‘Industry 4.0’.

This is a more complex term because of how broad this is and in simple words it can be understood as any computer system that controls or detect a physical or kinetic action.

But when these operational technologies are used there is another aspect that is of safety and cybersecurity. This is crucial because even a system which is isolated and is abandoned from an internet connection is still a security liability. This was demonstrated by the now infamous Stuxnet worm that was reported to be introduced to a “secure” facility by USB stick.