In today’s hyperconnected world, every manufacturing organization faces a conundrum: how to balance investments in digital transformation with securing operations. The benefits to Industry 4.0 are huge — and no one can afford to go backwards — but the risks are significant as well.
In fact, our research has found that threat groups continue to grow year-over-year versus decline. It’s no wonder that 85% of manufacturing professionals say that cybersecurity challenges are a medium or high obstacle to their adoption and use of transformational 4.0 technologies.
What does it take to securely welcome Industry 4.0? That’s precisely what we asked a panel of cybersecurity experts in our webinar, “Achieving Secure Digital Transformation in Manufacturing.” Watch the video or download the slides for their full insights, or read on for the highlights.
A Glimpse of the Future: Inside the Deloitte Smart Factory @ Wichita
Jimmy Asher, Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting, kicked off the presentation with an insider view into the Deloitte Smart Factory at Wichita State University. In Deloitte’s words:
The Smart Factory @ Wichita marries advanced manufacturing techniques with the Internet of Things to create manufacturing systems that go beyond being interconnected. We are now able to demonstrate how to communicate, analyze, and use information to drive further intelligent action back in the physical world. And for companies like yours, that means using technologies that drive down costs, increase efficiencies, and position your organization for success.
Jimmy shared renderings of the Smart Factory, which at the time of the webinar was currently under construction on nearly 60,000 square feet of smart, sustainable space. Described as “half working factory, half experience park,” it demonstrates how the future of manufacturing will embrace data disruption across a fully connected manufacturing stack.
As of December 2021, the Smart Factory has officially opened its doors. You can view Deloitte’s Smart Factory @Wichita video to learn more.
In the Trenches: 3 Cybersecurity Experts Share Their Experiences and Insights
After Jimmy introduced us to the Smart Factory, we turned to three cybersecurity experts for their take on balancing security and digital transformation. Our panelists, moderated by Dragos CISO Steve Applegate, included:
- Fran Cioffi, CISO, Georgia-Pacific
- Jeremy Korger, OT Cybersecurity Lead, Sub-Zero
- James Destro, Head of Manufacturing Industry Products, ServiceNow
In a wide-ranging conversation, the panel explored how to make cybersecurity an integral part of transformation — not a burden or an afterthought. From integrating cybersecurity into legacy applications and brownfield environments to the impact of cyber attacks like the Colonial Pipeline breach to building digital trust with partners and suppliers, the insights were both broad and deep.
Specific topics included how manufacturing organizations can:
- Change their approach to OT risk management given increased exposure
- Unify IT and OT operations across multiple plants with an enterprise model
- Handle resource constraints in the OT landscape
- Improve asset visibility (“You can’t protect what you can’t see”)
- Position cybersecurity as an enabler to the business and competitive differentiator
Industrial Strength Cybersecurity: How the Dragos Platform Protects Manufacturing Orgs
We wrapped up the presentation with a deep dive into the Dragos Platform. Dragos Sr. Director of Product Management Jimmy Graham explained how Dragos provides enterprise visibility across all of your sites so you can see events, correlate them, and proactively take action. He highlighted the platform’s vulnerability management capabilities, purpose-built for OT, that enables teams to focus on the highest risk assets with the greatest vulnerability.
Jimmy also detailed the platform’s deployment options (on-prem and AWS), ruggedized sensors, and many integrations, including seamless asset visibility through a partnership with ServiceNow. Finally, we took a look at the Dragos Platform in action, with a brief demo of how it operates to ensure threat prevention, detection, and response in a manufacturing environment.
Watch the on-demand webinar, Achieving Secure Digital Transformation in Manufacturing, for additional details into these topics and more.
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