Connectivity provides manufacturing plant operations many advantages like increased productivity, faster identification and remediation of quality defects, and better collaboration across functional areas. However, this connectivity is dramatically increasing smart factories’ vulnerabilities and leaving them exposed to cybersecurity threats.
Smartphones and other devices make accessing IT/OT systems on the plant floor easier, but the use of personal devices may cause security and legal problems.
Smartphones on the plant floor: Bring your own device (BYOD) or use company-owned devices? This question no doubt conjures up a multitude of things—good and bad—for personal devices on the plant floor, for example, connecting people with equipment and company data and providing workers with actionable information on the process and maintenance to make good decisions.
The company's information systems professionals and third-party experts are working with all available resources to investigate the outage and resolve the situation.
Known for its industrial line of printers, Videojet has extended networking options for users who need wireless connections but are squeamish about connecting their printers via just Wi-Fi—or Ethernet cabling—to internal plant or enterprise networks.
While food and beverage processors have been scrambling to protect their process control equipment, intellectual property (IP) and IT/OT systems from cybersecurity/ransomware attacks, their efforts may be outpacing the Federal Government, which should be setting an example by having secured its own agencies from cyberattacks.