Security in the Process of Industrial Evolution: An Industry 4.0 Perspective

By: Megha

Over the last few years, Information Technology (IT) systems have witnessed remarkable progress. The amalgamation of the Internet, embedded systems, and automation have fabricated opportunities for establishing inter-connectivity among humans and machines across industries. The fourth industrial revolution, called Industry 4.0, sets a new pace of automation for industrial practices by relying upon a plethora of modern-day technological pillars depicted in Figure 1. The fundamental design principles identified for guiding the researchers and practitioners to realize Industry 4.0 are [1] –

• Interconnection: It captures the ability of different notions or elements (e.g., devices, machines, sensors, humans) to connect and communicate with one another over the Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet of People (IoP).
• Information transparency: It captures the transparency offered by the Industry 4.0 technologies to their operators via comprehensive information (e.g., simulation models, e-documents, tool conditions) for effective decision-making.
• Technical assistance: It captures the technical facility comprising systems (e.g., robots, wearables) for assisting humans to perform complex tasks in a safe, effective, and seamless fashion.
• Decentralized decisions: It captures the ability of the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) to conduct decision-making in an autonomous fashion, where the tasks are delegated to the higher level only in exceptional cases.

However, the adoption of novel technological innovations is introducing a degree of uncertainty and unprecedented aspects in the way of conducting industrial processes. The multifaceted security concerns that organizations face in the era of Industry 4.0 are, but not limited to, potential risks originating from the connected devices, poor visibility across isolated system ’s-based environments, and limited security-oriented standards and regulations. In this regard, the following research perspectives need to be taken into account for research and development revolving across Industry 4.0 applications –

• With the dynamically changing technologies, one of the critical concerns to be addressed in implementing the new technologies is to synchronize the risk management process with the strategic business decisions in the early stages [2].
• With the endorsement of wireless technologies and IoT devices in specific industrial sectors (like manufacturing, healthcare, automotive), information network scaling solutions need to be investigated with the provisioning of security measures [3].
• Ways to secure digital knowledge provisioning among different stakeholders in the solution development and maintenance process need to be identified and explored, both at the technical and policy formulation level [4].

References:

1. Hermann, M., Pentek, T., & Otto, B. (2016, January). Design principles for industrie 4.0 scenarios. In 2016 49th Hawaii international conference on system sciences (HICSS) (pp. 3928-3937). IEEE.
2. Kamble, S. S., Gunasekaran, A., & Gawankar, S. A. (2018). Sustainable Industry 4.0 framework: A systematic literature review identifying the current trends and future perspectives. Process Safety and Environmental Protection, 117, 408-425.
3. Prinsloo, J., Sinha, S., & von Solms, B. (2019). A review of industry 4.0 manufacturing process security risks. Applied Sciences, 9(23), 5105.
4. DesRuisseaux, D. (2018). Cybersecurity Assessment—The Most Critical Step to Secure an Industrial Control System. Schneider Electric: Andover, MA, USA.

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