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After a delayed start, in the last years OT security has substantially caught up with IT security. Many technical IT security controls are also available for machines and plants. But the maturity distribution in the field of OT is more complex and fragmented, as shown in the present article. Certain fundamental issues and contradictions of IT security become particularly obvious here and might need to be solved within OT security.

Industry 4.0 forces companies to keep their business models up-to-date to keep their competitiveness and to satisfy customer demands. Key words like “individual production” and “lot size one” put pressure on companies to adapt their current production to the new requirements. Especially for companies with a mass production this sounds like a 180° turn. Furthermore, no best-practices for introducing industry 4.0 exist and therefore, one cannot rely on such hold points. Nevertheless, a structured transformation of the own business model towards industry is not impossible.

Trends such as Industry 4.0 or the Internet of Things lead to increased networking and integration of various data in the production. At the same time, the increased networking posses challenges regarding security issues. Negative examples involve the unsecured connection of various programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that are reachable through the Internet. In part, but also inadvertently, there are additional risks for the production plant. The reasons are the comfortable maintenance of plants as well as using external support for complex problems.

Information security on the Internet is a key challenge. Each IoT connected device is exposed to potential manipulation and interference. Therefore, companies are looking for solutions to minimize their data risks. Sigfox offers a dedicated network for data collection and transfer that serves as a protective layer between the devices and the cloud app. Sigfox devices do not communicate over the Internet and yet their big data reaches the cloud. The network ensures very high system-intrinsic security, which is ideal for industrial application scenarios.

Autonomous transportation systems represent a significant use case for the implementation of industry 4.0. The transparency of logistics parameters, especially the replenishment time, can be increased and controlled efficiently compared to conventional material supply based on milkrun concepts. This article describes a systematic approach to ensure the process capability of the replenishment time for logistics processes based on autonomous transportation systems applying a six sigma approach. The case study has been performed in a real production environment in the automotive supplier industry.

Technicians and service operators in machine and plant engineering need more and more information to assemble the more complex products. Additional effort is necessary, when technicians have to document their work progress or report problems. One reason for this is that production is generally not integrated into the digital flow of information. Case studies from the industry show the high potential of innovative software solutions by integrating the production perfectly into the digital information flow.

Technological progress offers opportunities for introducing new business models but also opens new paths for attackers. Security-by-design integrates factory security from the start and introduces a continuous security process built upon a variety of components. This article illustrates some of these components by highlighting secure processes with specific case studies: anomaly detection within value networks and secure production planning with simulation.

The popularity of the Cloud rises, but there is still much insecurity in the IT-Security of a cloud solution. Companies want to be able to check, if the processes in the cloud are secure and trustworthy. This is possible with an external auditing system, which compares measured data with predefined rules. But there is a chance, that the measured data are manipulated on its way to the auditing system, before leaving the cloud. To prevent these threads, the measured data must be protected right after it is generated. This is possible with the forward integrity method, which builds a chain-of-trust for the measured data without need of a TPM.

Securing the IoT poses specific challenges which are still only partially solved. These include the often very limited computing, storage, and energy resources of wirelessly connected IoT devices, the high demands on the user-friendliness, as well as the high-cost pressure. Upon this background, the research project PROPHYLAXE (“Providing Physical Layer Security for the Internet of Things”), funded by the BMBF, pursued a novel approach in which the physical properties of the wireless transmission link between two devices are exploited. Based on these properties, cryptographic keys can be generated that are known only to the communicating devices and can be used to secure and authenticate a connection.

In the project CrimpProd-S the integration of decentralized, self-learning production control systems in the context of Industry 4.0 in combination with additive manufacturing is investigated. The overall target is the economic evolutionary integration of lot size 1 in existing production facilities. Therefore a procedure model and customized methods are developed to analyze the potentials regarding the existing company’s strategy, value chain as well as the business model. This integrated procedure guarantees the efficient and customer-oriented transformation.