Industrial cybersecurity: how and why to ensure it

Your equipment, your manufacturing processes, your R&D studies and the data of your partners, collaborators and customers represent sensitive and invaluable information that cyber attackers covet. As a manager, CIO or employee of a company, ensuring its industrial cybersecurity becomes one of your priorities. Its turnover and its reputation depend on it. Focus on a major concern for Industry 4.0.

What is a cyberattack?

To understand the issues behind industrial cybersecurity, you must first understand what a cyberattack is . What is its main objective? How to detect its effects? Why worry now?

industrial piracy

Our society is becoming more digital every day. Privately, accommodations connect to a multitude of systems that represent an easy target for hackers. Connected objects make everyday life easier at the same time as they unwittingly help burglars to enter your home.

The evolution of your industrial operation follows the same pattern: your processes, your production chains, your exchanges with your suppliers, your internal communication, your information storage, etc. Everything is connected and above all interconnected . This digital omnipresence represents as many gateways into your company for cyberattackers .

At stake ? Your know-how, the value of your expertise, confidential information on your processes, in short all the wealth of your company.

The different types of attacks and their objectives

Why would a hacker want to attack your business? The objectives are multiple:

• Cybercrime is aimed at the lure of profit. By hacking into your systems and encrypting your most valuable and business-critical data, hackers hope to get a ransom for a decryption key
• Industrial espionage interests your competitors through the extraction of your R&D data, your commercial exchanges, your economic intelligence and everything that can harm your productivity and your profitability
• Sabotage simply aims to stop your activity
• Damage to your brand image and your reputation can completely destroy you

While cybercrime is all about the money, the other three types of attacks directly affect the operation and sustainability of your industry. Your business is at risk as well as your employees. Industrial cybersecurity protects you from the worst .

threat status

With more than two million cyberattacks per year worldwide, roughly half of businesses experience at least one attack annually, with potentially disastrous consequences .

Do you think you run no risk? Who would blame your industry? It comes down to asking why burglars are interested in your house rather than another or why your competitors would like to dethrone you. Industrial cybersecurity must be part of your daily concerns.

As you read these words, your industry is under threat . You should not ask yourself if it can happen, but rather when.

Think again, you won't see anything coming.

Industrial espionage and data exfiltration are invisible. For days or months, a hacker could recover critical information from the one unlocked computer used by one of your interns. You won't notice anything .

In some situations, the observation will be immediate. Your processes will be paralyzed and your business shut down.

What are the consequences of a cyberattack for an industrialist?

The consequences of a cyberattack are most often reversible, even if significant and costly work to rebuild computer systems will be expected.

Anticipating an attack thanks to the cybersecurity of industrial processes represents a less costly investment than that of repairing it .

For an industrialist, the financial aspect is not the worst. Damage to brand image has far more disastrous consequences, because it exposes an industry that is vulnerable, unsuited to today's world and dangerous for its customers and partners.

How can we trust a technology that does not understand the dangers of the 21st century?

Why ensure the cybersecurity of industrial processes?

Operator or manager of a PMI, your duty is to ensure the industrial cybersecurity of your processes and all of your digital information.

Savings and financial gain with industrial cybersecurity

By guaranteeing the cybersecurity of your industrial processes, you save the money that an attack could cost you . It generally amounts to millions of euros for companies that believed they could avoid the worst.

Securing presents an essential and low investment compared to what it can save you.

Production continuity ensured with cybersecurity of industrial systems

Industrial cybersecurity guarantees the continuity of your production chain .

By ensuring this, your orders are guaranteed to be produced on time and you do not waste time managing an attack since you have anticipated it.

You stay calm and prepared for the worst.

Preservation of industry data and know-how

The most important values in your industry: your know-how and your data.

If hackers encrypt them in the hope of obtaining a ransom, it is good that they know their inestimable value.

Intact brand image with a good industrial network cybersecurity strategy

Industrial cybersecurity ensures that you keep your brand image intact . Compared to your competitors who may be suffering from cyberattacks and biting their fingers, your value proposition is strengthened: your company is reliable and connected to the times.

When a cyberattack forces an SME/SMI manager to stop production or when the data of thousands of people is hacked, the information quickly makes the headlines.

Damage to a company's brand image leads to substantial financial loss. When consumers, partners and suppliers no longer have confidence, reversing the trend is impossible.

Compliance with industrial cybersecurity legislation

The law seizes the problem, because the companies and the industrialists neglect the size of the threat.

The European Cybersecurity Regulation, voted by MEPs on March 12, 2019, requires the drafting of an industrial cybersecurity certification contract . Long, tedious, difficult to understand, the reasons for delaying its signature are numerous.

When a problem arises, the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (CNIL) checks the content of the security contract. In the event of technical and legal negligence, you will incur a conviction with a dissuasive fine . However, the directors of SMEs or SMIs fear the second sentence, which consists of mandatory publication by name for two years in the press .

The possible damage to the brand image encourages interest in the cybersecurity of its industrial processes.

To understand how to write a security contract, contact a lawyer who specializes in the subject.

What industrial cybersecurity policy should be put in place?

Do not be afraid. The situation is critical, but solutions exist. Implementing an industrial cybersecurity policy will protect you from attempted attacks.

Ensuring the cybersecurity of industrial processes with hackers in the design phase

To avoid being hacked, simply recruit the best hackers on the market to test your processes in the design phase, secure your data and your networks.

If your system gets hacked in less than 3 minutes, you need to upgrade it. When your web hacker finds no more flaws, the game is not won. Call on other hackers with varying methods to make your industrial cybersecurity tamper-proof.

Protecting yourself with cybersecurity in the industrial environment

Act now in three steps to guarantee the cybersecurity of your industrial equipment.

• Analysis of the situation

Analyze your processes, your accesses, your networks, your equipment, your data storage, your effective security measures and your compliance with data law (including GDPR).

• Risk mapping

With a clear vision of your situation, call on a company or recruit an expert who will scan the vulnerability of your operating systems and will also ensure a vulnerability watch.

Never overlook the importance of a person who maintains the industrial cybersecurity of all your processes. This position is decisive in the same way as that of your operations manager or your IT manager.

• Industrial cybersecurity strategy

You will endeavor to resolve the vulnerabilities detected as quickly as possible , because they represent as many opportunities to be the victim of a cyberattack.

Your security strategy will respond specifically to the particularities of your industry and nothing should be left to chance.

For more details on industrial cybersecurity, contact the ANSSI , National Agency for the Security of Information Systems, which will provide you with valuable advice.

Insure the risk of cyberattacks

You can also purchase cyber risk insurance . Distinct from insurance against computer risks, it is a specific guarantee against cyberattacks.

Industrial systems cybersecurity experts will respond the second a cyberattack is spotted. You'll get your data back faster and your business will suffer less downtime.

All costs related to the cyberattack will be covered, thus limiting your financial investment.

As for your brand image, it can try to be restored by a communication agency specialized in the matter.

You will agree that the best solution is to anticipate attacks through industrial cybersecurity . Inviolable, you will concentrate with complete peace of mind on the heart of your activity and on the satisfaction of your customers, employees and partners.