(68a) Industry 4.0 and Remote Monitoring: Navigating the Challenges of Interconnectivity and Cybersecurity

In an era characterized by escalating cyber threats and data vulnerabilities, there is a vital need for manufacturers to safeguard the integrity and security of their control networks. However, this imperative often clashes with the growing demand for real-time interconnectivity and digitization, particularly as industries seek remote technical support from OEMs and technical experts.

This session will present different connectivity options available for remote cyber-secured support, exploring how “manufacturers” can maintain a low latency real-time operational data flow for monitoring, advanced analytics, flow modeling, energy optimization and predictive maintenance while taking advantage of robust cybersecurity measures, benefiting from the advantages of interconnectivity between the enterprise (IT) network and the operational technology(OT) systems.

Additionally, the speakers will present the capabilities of small form-factor data diodes as a solution to establish a strict, cyber physical, secure-by-design unidirectional data flow to enable a monitoring-only approach without introducing additional threat vectors.

Attendees will learn from multiple use/business cases how large chemical and manufacturing operations have protected their operational technology and increased real-time monitoring capabilities within the enterprise/IT network without exposing the critical infrastructure to external threat actors and internal vulnerabilities.

The session will also impart the power of expanded analytics with real-time data access to areas that were previously “air gapped” or part of the industrial control systems.

Further, several use cases will highlight the ability of taking operational data from secure facilities, equipment or networks and securely transporting that data to a cloud instance (e.g. AWS or on-prem) implementing alert management and energy efficiency processes to ultimately reduce the total cost of ownership and increase the return on investment of cyber physical security as part of a defense-in-depth strategy.