Key Areas for Managing Industrial Risk
Industrial organizations around the world struggle to manage risk. Incidents such as product recalls, data breaches and worker injuries have immediate consequences and can impact customers, employees, intellectual property and revenue. Risk management should be focused on where problems originate. In many cases, that is within the automation infrastructure. For managing risk at its source, Rockwell Automation outlines four key areas, including:
- Equipment Obsolescence: Modernizing production systems can play a major role in minimizing downtime and improving quality, safety and security.
- Quality: Harnessing the power of existing operational data can improve quality management and help drive adherence to regulatory requirements.
- Safety: Addressing safety in crucial areas of culture, compliance and capital helps reduce the number of safety incidents and improve operational performance.
- Security: Embracing end-to-end security across facilities and enterprises helps to protect people, intellectual property and physical assets.
Rockwell Automation views enterprise risk management as a continuous cycle of improvement that includes assessments, technology and infrastructure, and believes that, by addressing risk in these key areas, companies can effectively manage brand-critical safety, quality, security and obsolescence challenges at their source.
Best Practices for Comprehensive Industrial Security
Rockwell Automation develops a three-step approach for building an industrial security program that extends from the enterprise to the plant level, and helps mitigate risk across people, processes and technology. The three steps take into account the connections between network security, as well as the physical security and safety in industrial areas. They include:
- Security assessment: Conduct a facility-wide assessment to understand risk areas and potential threats
- Defense-in-depth security: Deploy a multilayered security approach that establishes multiple tiers of defense
- Trusted vendors: Verify that your automation vendors follow core security principles when designing their products
For industrial organizations, security threats will continue to evolve. To keep pace, Rockwell Automation suggests that a holistic security program should evolve with and stay ahead of the changing threat landscape. By following the key approach, organizations can establish a program that can help protect intellectual property, facilities, assets, employees and competitive advantages into the future.
