Building National Cybersecurity Capabilities for Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

The fourth industrial revolution brings tremendous potential for innovation and growth for Australia. It also brings new risks and challenges, and this may be most evident in today’s manufacturing cyber landscape. In the past few years, many manufacturing companies are seeing an increase in cyber-related incidents associated with the control systems used to manage industrial operations. While the connectivity and the AI technologies have advantages such as increased levels of productivity and better collaboration across functional areas, it also multiplies the potential vulnerabilities of the smart factory. The threat landscape for the systems that control operations of a production facility has proliferated rapidly with the increase in digitisation and advanced technologies. Recent incidents include the Colonial Pipeline hacking that took down the largest fuel pipeline in the US and the $100M ransomware loss of Mondelez, a multinational food and beverage company. Given the rapid pace at which new technologies are adopted by the Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing, it is critical to build the cyber capabilities to secure the business-critical systems.