Industry in transformation: Sustainability and digitisation need Safety and Security

Thomas Pilz

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Our industry is undergoing a process of transformation. Digitisation and sustainability are the drivers of a changing industry.

Digitisation in industry leads to the networking of production systems. The risk of manipulation (intentional or otherwise) or data leakage increases with the level of networking. As opposed to IT Security, Industrial Security describes the protection of production and industrial plants from intentional attacks on the availability of plant and machinery. In contrast, the task of functional safety is to protect against dangerous states that are generated unintentionally.

I would like to refer back to last year’s press conference: The objective of Industrial Security is to guarantee the availability of plant and machinery, as well as the integrity and confidentiality of machine data and processes.

If I am not in control of my data, then the safety of my employees is also at risk: there’s no Safety without Security, and without Safety, people are not protected from accidents! As a result, a digital transformation of the production process cannot succeed without Security.

Security is necessary to protect human, machine and environment. It is the only way for companies to manage sustainably. This is evident from the billions of damages sustained by industry year on year, according to a report from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).