Rockwell Automation

Zero Trust is everywhere. It’s covered in industry trade publications and events, it’s a topic of conversation at board meetings, and it’s on the minds of CISOs, CIOs, and even the President. What is Zero Trust, and why is it important? Zero Trust isn’t a cybersecurity solution in and of itself, but implementing a Zero Trust architecture will help mitigate and ultimately lower the number of successful cybersecurity attacks your organization might otherwise endure, greatly reducing operational and financial risk.

The term “safety lifecycle” refers to a formalized engineering process that helps create a safety system that can work effectively throughout its lifespan. For example, industrial and manufacturing facilities use safety lifecycles to keep their functional systems operating smoothly. The safety lifecycle is described in international standards set by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

The test of global change has exposed the brittle nature of systems, processes, and supply chain solutions that had historically measured as “good enough.” A recent global survey of 321 manufacturers has shed light on the biggest industry obstacles and punctuated the need for agility, technology adoption, and improved processes to respond to market adversity. The results of this survey make up the 7th Annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report – the most robust edition yet.

How do you know that a perfect storm is brewing? If your team is tasked with securing your organization’s operational technology and industrial control systems (OT/ICS), you may have a pretty good idea by now. In critical infrastructure industries, the warning signs have been hard to miss lately. They include the convergence of business IT and OT systems, now accelerated in the cloud; the proliferation of database-driven Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) and phishing campaigns, etc.

From understanding the latest security compliance mandates, to finding, hiring, and retaining high performing security talent, most organizations struggle to manage cyber risk. This is a problem for any organization, but managing cyber risk is especially difficult for companies operating in Critical Infrastructure sectors where specific OT cybersecurity and industrial operations expertise are needed for minimized downtime and reduced cybersecurity risk.

Artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) are disrupting industrial manufacturing. In this article, we will focus on key trends that help leaders navigate their digital transformation (DX) initiatives with clear foresight. Ten years ago, model creation was the realm of data scientists, but that space has now been disrupted due to availability of easy-to-use tools that empower even the non-data scientist to leverage ML libraries and build models.