On June 28 we co-host the webinar "Cybersecurity Threats are Hiding Inside Your CNC Machines. What Can You do About it?"
Today we chat with the webinar speaker William J. Malik, vice president of infrastructure strategies with Trend Micro Incorporated, to preview that presentation. Take a look...
Smart Industry: How does connectivity within the modern manufacturing facility affect cybersecurity related to CNC machines?
William: With increasing connectivity, CNC machines are exposed to malicious code moving laterally through the enterprise. This dramatically increases the attack surface and puts the enterprise at greater risk of an attack.
Smart Industry: In your evaluation of four vendor machines that you will feature during your upcoming webinar, what is the most common security risk you found? How do you mitigate this security risk?
William: All vendors had systems that permitted malicious exploits, both in changing the operational parameters of the tools and in using the tool platforms as hosts for ransomware. Mitigation involves using authentication to only permit authorized users and processes from running the devices, and segmenting the network to filter out malicious network traffic.
Smart Industry: How is digitalization of industrial processes able to better protect industrial assets from cyber-attacks?
William: Digitialization doesn’t—itself—protect these assets; it makes them more exposed and vulnerable. Digitialization must include proven safeguards to respond to and mitigate the potential consequences of this greater attack surface. That means not just technology (to observe network traffic, prohibit unwanted processes from running where they shouldn’t, and limit access to sensitive nodes, servers and sensors), but also enhanced procurement processes (to rate the trustworthiness and securability of new assets) and improved operational procedures (to detect and respond to possible malicious activity).
