In the second leg of Digital Transformation & Cyber-security, Manufacturing Today along with Fortinet spoke to CIOs of leading manufacturing companies to understand the nuances of lurking fears and how they deal with it.
Held on December 11 from 2:30 pm to 3:30 pm on Zoom the virtual summit offered interesting insights and takeaways even for the layman.
Moderated by Jayashree Kini Mendes, editor at Manufacturing Today, the panellists comprised Ashok Jade, Group CIO, Spark Minda; Sanjiv Kumar Jain, Group CIO, Krishna Group; Alain Sanchez, EMEA CISO, Senior Evangelist, Fortinet; Dharmesh Rathod, Senior GM, Group IT, Welspun Group; and Swapan Gayen, Group CIO, Sonalika.
Some of the numerous questions that panellists dealt with were: Threats to the manufacturing sector; company spending on security solutions; ways to forestall threats, were just some of them.
Key points that emerged from the discussion are:
Sanjiv Kumar Jain: There are so many expensive manufacturing devices and equipment that hackers are constantly looking at. Maintaining the security of the company IP and also attending to each department’s security lies with us. We need to be constantly updated on latest techniques because one never knows where the threat will come from. The more we digitise, the more careful we have to be.
Dharmesh Rathod: We have various businesses in our company. Digitalisation has been taken seriously. We are getting into new arena of supply chain and vendors. That means maintaining strong security into each aspect and there are new additions frequently. Merging IT and OT means a plethora of technology that needs to be added. There is a compulsion to keep in touch with other industries and colleagues to find out ways to deal with newer threats.
Ashok Jade: It’s not only the organisation that is affected, but also people. Some of the challenges that we discussed pre-pandemic were production loss, affect brand image, etc. Data on cloud means it’s outside the organisation. The loss cannot even be gauged. The pandemic has compelled us to consider the loss and usually it’s beyond our imagination.
Swapan Gayen: Digitalisation has become a compulsion. Automation is another compulsion. As an OEM, we have to deal with hundreds of vendors and with new models, there are more being enrolled regularly. Information leaks out in surprising ways. One is not even aware. Even educating employees cannot be done to a deeper level. Particularly, the supply chain is affected the most as it is the most vulnerable.Â
Alain Sanchez: Cyber-security issues are serious. We do not like the idea of convergence of OT and IT. OT was designed for reliability and not for security as it was not required. It’s only when an untoward event happens that one considers. One must adopt a holistic view of the convergence. It is not jsutone device or one technology that will solve the problem. OT and IT speak different languages. One must speak the language of risk.
The webinar ended with a presentation by Sanchez and also threw up several questions that were answered by the panellists.