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produc t s & serv ices
HOW YOU SECU RE YOU R SMART FAC TORY
BY DESIGN! The Smart Factory has been inspiring Industry for some time. Plant managers hope for more intuitive operation and a better supply of information, and process managers expect machines that communicate smartly with one another, and look forward to increasing efficiency. This inspiration has the potential to fundamentally change many areas of industrial production. Today, however, one thing is clear: we will not be given the efficiency gains from the Smart Factory on a plate! This is because, in addition to the high investment required in Smart Factory solutions, we will also be taking on an element of risk – the risk of leaving a known path and placing ourselves in front of new challenges.
In our last edition of IU (Information Unlimited magazine no. 27, April 2015), we highlighted the potential dangers of a Smart Factory from the perspective of industrial security. The opening up of production networks and the exchange of data beyond different areas, and possibly the limits of the company, leaves the automation infrastructure open to attack. In addition to the existing mantra of high availability, automation systems must now implement a further challenge in the shortest time possible: protection of the system against cyber-attacks. For COPA-DATA, the topic of industrial security has been an integral part of our product philosophy for many years. This stance covers the design of our internal development processes through the architecture of our products to the basic technologies used and operating systems supported. Our aim is to strengthen the zenon Product Family even further and to give our users all the tools necessary to protect their equipment. As we do so, the following question arises: what can a component supplier such as COPA-DATA contribute to a security concept for a complete plant? One could argue that it is the task of the equipment operators to implement suitable measures to guarantee the security of equipment. However, we believe a holistic consideration of systems, as well as people and processes, is always necessary for security questions. Particular components used, such as software, can make their contribution to “system security”. What follows is an overview, based on questions that our customers have asked.