ENSURING A SENSE OF SECURITY

The advent of Industry 4.0 technologies and the gradual digitisation of manufacturing processes has explicitly exposed the industry to cybersecurity challenges. In an interview, Mahesh Wagle, Co-Founder CEO of Cybernetik, talks about why automated manufacturing facilities should prioritise cybersecurity and how they can avert the threats caused by it. He also spoke about the consequence of digital twin and lights-out factories on the Indian manufacturing sector, new technologies and innovations launched by his company and other plans.

- Nisha Shukla

Tell us about the new trends shaping the food, agro, pharmaceutical, chemical, and other manufacturing industries.

Manufacturing will be more data-driven than ever before. It will shift from automation to autonomy as Industry 4.0 technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), virtual reality (VR), industrial internet of things (IIoT), predictive data analytics, augmented reality (AR), and others will become more sophisticated. The data-driven model will not improve production operations but also the supply chain, enhancing resource usage and associated efficiencies.

What, according to you, are the cybersecurity challenges faced by the manufacturing industry? How can these be tackled? 

Prior to the advancement of technology, manufacturing businesses were only connected within the network of a single organisation, with restricted internet access, making it difficult to communicate with other organisations or individuals in general. However, technology has evolved, and the archaic ways of communicating within the manufacturing industry are obsolete. Threat actors can access a system undetected, move laterally, mine information, and exit before anyone notices they were there.

Phishing attacks are highly widespread in the manufacturing industry, and it is one of the areas that receive the most phishing attacks each year. IBM released a report detailing how ransomware and other vulnerabilities disrupted supply chains, with manufacturing being the top targeted industry. Another challenge is Supply chain attacks. There are three types of supply chain attacks: Software, Firmware, and Hardware attacks.