The impact of lacking deep industrial cybersecurity skills at your plant goes well beyond the obvious risk of heightening vulnerability to damages from cyberattacks. The more you can dissect and address interrelated skill shortages challenges, the better you can overcome them to run a safe operation – digitally and physically. Articulating the impact can also help better manage budgets, hiring, interdepartmental coordination, and other key activities that make for successful production, day in and day out.
At its most superficial level, missing cybersecurity skills means security is always lagging behind on the to-do list. If your plant is like most, the range of required tasks already is far and wide for personnel, and unlike safety, security is not always top of mind for those operational experts. On the other hand, if you have certified information systems security professionals (CISSPs) or other certified security professionals on your team, chances are the software patching will get done on time and nobody will be allowed to walk right up to an engineering workstation with an unchecked USB device (Stuxnet, anyone?). Trained cybersecurity personnel are the first to think differently about how and why your operations are running. They are also the first to act when it comes to security concerns.
Read the rest of the article "Head Off A Cyber-Catastrophe" from our sister publication Plant Services.
