Branche: Information Security

The growing demand for battery cells offers significant potential for the use of digital solutions in their manufacture, which in turn creates opportunities for added value through adaptive and flexible production systems. A key enabler is interoperable data exchange based on formalized data descriptions. Existing ontologies and information models remain too abstract for direct implementation. This paper presents a requirements analysis of data standards in battery cell manufacturing. A procedure for developing domain-specific standards based on OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) is derived from the results.

Load carriers are essential for transporting manufactured parts in manufacturing companies. Despite their ‘simplicity’, they are usually expensive to purchase as they are manufactured expressly to fit purpose. While tracking methods such as GPS tracking can be used to prevent the loss of load carriers, this is associated with monitoring costs and presents challenges with regard to data protection as soon as the work performance of intralogistics employees is monitored. Assigning load carriers to designated clusters and monitoring these clusters provides an effective solution—without drawing conclusions about employee performance. Furthermore, artificial intelligence can optimize this approach whilst also deterring the theft of load carriers.

Functional safety (safety) and cyber security (security) are key aspects of modern industry and technology. Safety aims to minimize risks posed by system malfunctions. This includes measures to protect people and the environment from failures and errors within systems. Security focuses on protecting systems and networks from digital attacks. The primary security objectives include ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability. A joint consideration of safety and security is essential for the future of the process industry, as both the physical safety and digital integrity of modern systems must be ensured. In industrial practice, this creates a field of tension: measures to enhance security can negatively impact safety and vice versa. This article analyzes relevant standards and regulations, presents key approaches for the integrated consideration of safety and security, and highlights areas of further research.

In line with current digital transformations, the number of software applications in use by companies is continuously increasing. This particularly affects industrial enterprises, which face challenges due to their often complex business processes. A holistic and sustainable integration of these business processes requires a strong link between the different information systems used. In this context, application integration, also known as enterprise application integration (EAI), is becoming more important. Modern approaches such as the use of microservices offer a particularly flexible and efficient solution for seamlessly connecting different applications and thus promoting the agility and scalability of a company’s IT landscape.

Modern cloud architectures benefit, among other things, from improved availability due to different cloud locations and greater flexible scalability due to the theoretically unlimited computing power of the cloud. However, in addition to challenges regarding data protection and data security, companies are increasingly concerned about the growing dependency on their cloud provider. In this article, we present a prototype implementation for switching between cloud services from different providers at the PaaS level.

In order to cope with growing customer requirements and the associated increase in complexity, companies are opening up their value chains, reducing their vertical integration and increasingly entering into collaborations. Cross-company data exchange along the supply chain is thus becoming a key component for competitiveness and the realization of customer-specific solutions. For this reason, the European Union has launched the GAIA-X project, which aims to create the next generation of data infrastructure for Europe and its companies. The GAIA-X maturity model offers an approach for classifying companies into different development stages and provides concrete requirements for further development along a predefined development path towards becoming a fully-fledged participant in the federated GAIA-X data infrastructure.

Interoperable automation can benefit cybersecurity certification processes that result from the EU Cybersecurity Act (e.g. EUCS) so that they represent less overhead for the stakeholders involved. The development of key standardization efforts involving relevant stakeholders (e.g. regulators) is needed to fully realize these benefits. EU projects like H2020 MEDINA, HEU COBALT and communities such as EUROSCAL are well on the way to achieving this goal. However, more practical experience is needed to make continuous certification with automation a reality.

With its ability to integrate digital information into the real world, augmented reality (AR) is increasingly becoming a critical success factor when it comes to safe, efficient and human-centered manufacturing. However, the implementation of an AR project poses various challenges that can hinder its ability to succeed. A clear sequence of steps for implementing this technology is therefore essential.

Every day there are cyber attacks in the industrial sector − only the most spectacular incidents make the headlines. Like the attack on the automotive supplier Continental last summer or on the commercial vehicle supplier SAF-Holland in March this year. The financial damage caused by such attacks and the loss of trust among customers and employees are enormous. As protection against cyber attacks, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) now recommends that companies use a browser with so-called virtualised instances for the first time. This is because most attacks enter company networks via the internet. Such a browser can systematically keep attackers out of the network and is therefore a particularly effective protection.

Manufacturing companies of all sizes have been a popular target for hackers and cyber criminals for years - and the trend is rising. In addition to security gaps in the IT systems, OT systems, i.e. operational technology, are increasingly being targeted by attackers in the course of digitalisation and networking. The consequence: companies should secure themselves as quickly as possible. Hans-Peter Bauer, Senior Vice President Cyber EMEA at BlackBerry, explains how this is possible. (Only in German)