In earlier era industrial machineries, facilities, and processes are based on manual input and output mechanisms, that means manual labour and manual controls are used so that the plant and its facilities run efficient and are kept at a rate which gives optimum output for the whole process. Each system is independent in its own process and it only become integrated with the output it provides which is at the end or bottom part of the whole process.

Now in modern times, large plants and facilities and almost all factories utilize industrial control systems that are centralized, network-based and are most commonly connected to the internet. It can be said that systems today are more complex than their past predecessors thus with its complexities comes the vulnerabilities. With past systems that rely wholly on manual control and labour and are isolated, one vulnerability is the human aspect of the system, but with complex systems that we have now which rely on computers and networks a new vulnerability arises, the cybersecurity weakness.

They Are Targeted for Attacks

Industrial control systems are more vulnerable as of today because more and more people today such as thieves, and even brand competitors and also terrorists are posing a new threat to these industrial systems. With sophisticated tools and warfare by the threat, cybersecurity companies, which are most commonly hired by these large companies to fil the need for security, are stepping up their game to provide security for company’s assets. Megatronicpower.com.au is one of those formidable and credible companies that offers such services for control systems designs and even control system firewalls and security measures to give a complete and sophisticated security measure for their clients.

Roles of Industrial Control Systems Security

One of the main roles of the system is to assess and identify risks, analyse data and processes which are in line with the risks, secure data in order for these risks to be less damaging or ineffective, and analyse systems capabilities in relation to how it could respond to these risks.

Another function is to protect the system whenever a risk manifests from foreseen and unforeseen sources. The security system should be able to develop and implement standard safeguarding services that are critical for ensuring that the whole system would still function in its optimum efficiency. Should a risk occur, the system should be able to protect information, the facility’s processes, and even identity management and maintain access control to the whole system.

Thirdly, the safety and security protocol should be designed and programmed in a way that it could identify and expose a cybersecurity incident. Some cybersecurity platforms also have network speed and loading so that it could also observe and monitor the capacity of task for a specific system.

Lastly, should an attack occur and a risk crossed all security protocols of the system, the security breach should not render the whole system incapacitated but rather it is the task of the security program to create a protocol that would ensure that the whole industrial control system would still recover immediately and proceed with its activity even after and risk incident occurred.

Thus, it is very important to employ a cybersecurity program or protocol for every company.