Crystal Ball 2025 finale: AI and its influence on software and manufacturing security
Welcome to the Crystal Ball Report for 2025, which is appearing in this web space as a series of contributed pieces from esteemed experts in manufacturing technology.
We've invited these thought leaders to look into their "crystal balls" and tell us what's ahead (with an emphasis on data, AI, and cybersecurity).
So please enjoy the series and, from all of us at SI, have a prosperous and profitable new year.
If we, therefore, seem at Smart Industry like we are paying outsized attention in 2025 to cybersecurity (as the Crystal Ball series also intentionally did), there’s a reason.
Maybe one message we’ll bring you in this new year will be to update the technology that runs your plant floor, because it’s frightening to hear these horror stories about how vulnerable your tech possibly is to intrusion. It’s shockingly easy to get in. I’m not saying it; the experts are.
Best of 2024: SI looks back at our favorite features
Want to cost your organization millions in downtime (maybe millions more in ransom to sophisticated system intruders) and even more to a security vendor to prevent the next hack from occurring? Don’t update your systems or how you go about keeping your technology secure. There’s a relatively new expression for this: FAFO. We won’t go into what the acronym stands for, but you get the picture—and it’s not pretty, not at all.
There are common-sense solutions that we've presented all through 2024 (and will continue to present this year) for reinforcing your cyber defenses.
We've featured experts like Kiteworks CISO Frank Balonis, a 20-year veteran in IT support and protecting manufacturing systems, in an episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast—and Frank (as well as myself) will return for a webinar this month presented by Yubico.
What our reader survey told us
OK, now to the reader survey …
The poll, which lived on our site for several months, was a very simple one to take, but the results delivered a very clear message: When asked “which manufacturing technology will most attract attention in 2025,” almost half (48%) of respondents answered AI and machine learning. This tells us (and you) that, in addition to cybersecurity, our focus in 2025 will be very AI- and ML-oriented.
Additionally, another 17% in the survey said industrial internet of things (IIoT) for tasks such as predictive maintenance (always a focus of ours) while 11% others said automation and robotics. More fodder for coverage opportunities this year at Smart Industry.
Podcast: Insights from our team of editors on how 2024 transformed manufacturing (Part 1)
Podcast: Insights from our team of editors on how 2024 transformed manufacturing (Part 2)
Other topics—additive manufacturing and 3D printing (which IMHO are important but have become niche processes), metaverse (virtual environments for training and monitoring) and sustainable production (tech that helps reduce your plant’s carbon footprint)—ranked in the low single digits by comparison among respondents.
That last one is personally disappointing to me, with only 3% citing sustainable manufacturing as worthy of attention. The planet is important, our only home. We’re learning the hard way right now in L.A. We learned a lot from the survey and from the Crystal Ball series.
I also encourage everyone to check out our new State of Initiative Report, which takes a deeper dive into what company tech people and stakeholders are thinking in regard to about digital transformation.
