Special feature Manufacturing after Covid-19

BY: GAL IN AA NT OVA, CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OFFICER AT C LA ROT Y, AC Y BE R SECURITY SOFTWARE COMPANY FOCUSED ON PROTECTING INDUSTRIAL CONTROL NETWORKS.

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC is placing huge demands on manufacturing and supply chains worldwide. It has seen demand for some products and services increase enormously, while demand for others has shrivelled.

It has seen manufacturers repurpose facilities to produce products they normally wouldn’t: gin distillers have turned to hand sanitiser production and car manufacturers are churning out ventilators.

At the same time, manufacturers are trying to minimise the risk of infection by getting as many staff as possible to work from home.

The ability to remotely monitor and control production facilities will be critical to minimising contact between workers, as will the ability to rapidly process orders, and quickly adapt production facilities to changing markets and environments.

MAINTAINING NORMALITY UNDER COVID-19

Ailytic, a provider of production management software to the manufacturing sector, polled its customers to ascertain how they were ‘maintaining a semblance of normality’ in production management and organisational control under the impact of Covid-19.

It reported that the better performing companies had ‘the systems, processes and automation in place to ensure communication flows to all stakeholders in a timely fashion’, and had ‘adopted a digital-first philosophy and implemented scalable, mobile- enabled systems that provide similar visibility of site activities whether they are on the factory floor or at home with an iPad’.

These developments exacerbate issues the manufacturing sector has grappled with for years: integrating information and operational technology to fully exploit potential synergies.

DATA INTEGRATION ESSENTIAL

Effective, efficient, secure, and tightly integrated information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) will be essential if manufacturers are to rise to the challenges created by Covid-19.

Fundamental to OT/IT integration is the ability to exchange data between these two worlds, to support business planning and management and to enable production systems to be more responsive to business priorities and customer requirements.

For many years, OT and IT have developed on very different paths, making integration challenging. According to the OPC Foundation, integration enables information to be easily and securely exchanged between diverse platforms from multiple vendors and to allow seamless integration of those platforms without costly, time- consuming software development.

SECURITY CHALLENGES

However secure data exchange is only one of the many security challenges facing any organisation seeking to integrate its OT and IT systems. Additional challenges include:

• OT networks run on proprietary protocols and there is a lot of legacy equipment which is incompatible with and inaccessible by the traditional IT security tools used in IT Enterprise environments. Therefore, the same security tools that work well in IT, are not appropriate for OT – we need OT- specific security technology.

• OT often controls and monitors real-time processes, making the consequences of failure or compromise immediate and, potentially, catastrophic.

• In the past, OT networks achieved a degree of ‘security- by-isolation’ but their increasing integration with IT networks is exposing them to the global community of cyber- criminals and other would- be hackers.

COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY IS ESSENTIAL

Meeting these challenges requires a comprehensive approach that addresses all the potential weaknesses in the security of integrated IT and OT networks.

One of the most important considerations is segmenting the network. There have been numerous examples of how devices unnecessarily connected into corporate networks have been used as attack vectors. In one instance, a casino was hacked through the smart thermometer in its lobby aquarium.

An increase in the number of devices connected to a manufacturing plant’s network increases the attack surface and opens up the threat of bad actors gaining online access to operational processes, which in today’s connected infrastructure, can originate from anywhere.

The principle that you cannot protect what you cannot see is also true of OT networks. Security tools require deep visibility into networks in order to identify connected devices and network processes. To improve network security, manufacturers should begin by mapping their networks and devices and identify any sensitive or vulnerable areas. They must develop a complete

inventory of endpoints and map the communication paths between them. Luckily, purpose- built OT security technologies have recently emerged, enabling security and operational staff to discover the assets on their network.

Security tools also need to maintain an up to date list of all known threats seen in the wild so they can detect these in any monitored network.

In securing the OT network, the same principle applies; to define what is normal, we must monitor all assets on the network, map communication patterns, and understand the purpose of that communication. The best OT security technologies establish a baseline of normal behaviour by monitoring activity over an extended period and establishing patterns of behaviour.

And, in today’s world, they also need to support secure remote access to all network management and monitoring tools and robust protection against any unauthorised access.

REMOTE WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

Technologies that enable industrial processes to be comprehensively and securely monitored and managed are essential to enable manufacturing and distribution to continue with minimal disruption and with a minimal on- site workforce. However, remote management software must be advanced enough to adequately manage both those working on- site and off- site.

Today’s workforce management systems can provide real-time enforcement and monitoring capabilities and can be integrated with access control and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to facilitate remote management of the workforce.

BEYOND COVID-19

The pandemic will eventually pass – but many of the changes it has imposed are likely to endure.

In particular, it will certainly accelerate the adoption of Industry 4.0, the next industrial revolution. Many of Industry 4.0’s attributes, as defined by the New Zealand Government’s innovation agency, Callaghan Innovation, are exactly what the manufacturing sector needs to minimise the disruption caused by Covid-19 and rise to its challenges.

Industry 4.0, Callaghan Innovation says, will deliver, amongst other benefits:

• Increased monitoring and control for increased efficiency.

• Modelling of products and processes to create ‘ digital twins’ that will provide real-time status updates on your product and processes. These will be accessible remotely.

• Increased use of robotics and automation, which will reduce the need for workers on site in production facilities.

Even the darkest cloud can have a silver lining.