Robots welding in a production line

IoT Set To Transform Manufacturing, Security is Obstacle| IDG Connect

The folks over at IDG Connect have a good overview of what the German Government calls “Industry 4.0” but many of us just think of as a branch of the Internet of Things.

Robots welding in a production line
The Internet of Things is set to transform manufacturing. However, security remains a roadblock.

The blog post by Andy Roxburgh, the Vice-President of Systems and Service in Schneider Electric’s Industry Business, predicts that automation and intelligent machinery will lead to a transition from human-intensive low wage manufacturing to machine centric “smart” manufacturing that lowers costs by taking humans out of the equation and using automation to create faster, more effective and nimble manufacturing processes.

“Manufacturers need to prepare for a world where value is re-defined,” Roxburgh says. “Winning companies will be those who automate their operations and use data to create the smartest processes.”

No surprise: security is one major obstacle on the road to Industry 4.0 (as we’ve written before). “Universally connected devices, more data, and a boom of cloud-based technology means manufacturers and users have more reasons to be concerned about data security,” Roxburgh warns in the blog post, which you can find here.

Traditional defensive technologies like firewalls and anti-virus software as well as regular patching will help mitigate threats. However, IoT infrastructure that supports manufacturing will have to adhere to the highest standards for securing data in transit and at rest.

Read more via IDG Connect – A New World Wired by the Internet of Things.

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