As industrial organizations grapple with COVID-19 fallout, automation has become an even hotter topic. Experts fear, however, that the acceleration of automation could drive unforeseen consequences for organizations that don’t focus on security.

“When it comes to automation and industrial control systems (ICS), there is no doubt haste makes more than waste,” said Dan Miklovic, an analyst at the Analyst Syndicate. “It leads to potentially catastrophic or deadly outcomes.”

Mission-critical systems in industrial facilities have traditionally relied on the close oversight of human workers because the senses were “usually the most effective way to ensure optimum uptime,” Chris Catterton, director of solution engineering at ONE Tech. That is changing. Automated systems often exceed human capacity to spot machine problems. An automated system can detect when a torque value on a bolt is, for instance, a few pounds light, or hear a high-frequency bearing squeal undetectable to the human ear, Catterton said.

But being lax in terms of industrial automation security can be dangerous. Hobbyist electronics, for instance, may make automating industrial machinery simple, but such products can also provide cyberattackers with a familiar target, Miklovic said. “Plug-and-play automation solutions that are not built with security in the forefront can also open the door for a vast amount of vulnerabilities,” Catterton said.

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