Plant floor cyber security is among today’s most serious risks facing our collective national security as well as our individual production businesses. Yet the possibility of the Web to constructively and drastically transform our companies is not deniable. The key will be between danger and earnings flows and to reach proper balances between security and productivity. The conclusions to be done in this respect are C-package conclusions, to be managed by boards of directors. As supervisors and engineers, if we want to be understood in the C-suite of our business, it’d be as element of the option and not as the reason for the trouble. We can’t let the hoopla over the industrial Internet of stuff (IIoT) to entice us into situations of susceptibility. We have to make sure before we do whatever may expose our businesses that plant floor cyber security has been satisfactorily addressed.

This two-part post isn’t meant as a how to guide, but instead a why-should direct. This month we’ll dig deeply into why should a subscriber of Packaging World– a material provider, an equipment provider, or whether a packager — be participated in cyber security talks at the highest amounts of their business? Why should teachers, lobbyists, professional organizations and other individuals working with these businesses be part of the discussion? Next month we’ll propose some strategies that may be used, a number of the places which should be considered, and a few resources that may be drawn upon in the procedure for turning discussions into actions.

Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturing companies (CPGs) in particular, and hybrid vehicle manufacturing companies in general, are being largely overlooked in cyber security supervision. Law, requires important parts of the procedure sectors, as portion of our essential energy infrastructure to deal with cyber security. Distinct manufacturing companies, especially those involved in production components for important weapons and small arms systems, are being trained and prodded by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to shut cyber security loop holes. But scanning the attendee list suggests the convention was under-represented by procedure and packaging machinery contractors, little procedure operators, and packagers.

Address and hybrid Vehicle makers as well as their packaging and processing equipment providers are being left mostly to their very own devices to recognize the plant floor cyber risk. My research indicates that just the greatest among them are really taking sufficient measures to deal with the issue. Best practices would include those whose boards have directed measures provided financing to do this, be taken to ensure the shop floor, and establish their internal audit sections about the job of testing and reporting on progress. To carry out these directives, one CPG firm has created an engineering function together with the term “security” in its charter and name, and one has been working together with the atomic sector to come up with world class protections and procedures.

At PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2003, a paper was sponsored by the OMAC Packaging Workgroup on the subject of plant floor network security. Twelve years after, most producers have yet to reach the degrees of security described then. But given the risks of today, those amounts are no longer sufficient. We didn’t want to risk the security of machines, our goods or work force to some random intrusion across our networks which may cause our systems to briefly go uncontrollable.

I’m convinced the internet doesn’t sufficiently replace face to face opportunities to socialize across sectors, disciplines, and degrees of expertise to help individuals realize that they do not know what they do not know.

Businesses do not like to discuss the fact that they’re being targeted, and they definitely do not need to talk about having been broken. They do not need to share how they’re shielded, because understanding the defenses of a target can be a key to conquering them. However, is it? I am able to declare the president’s executive order didn’t make my research for this particular post any more easy