The evolution of communications in society is also having an impact on the industrial world. With the arrival of 5G, many industrial companies have considered migrating some of their communications to take advantage of the characteristics of this new mobile communications band, such as the reduction of latency times, the increase in connection speed or the exponential increase in the number of devices that can be connected to the network. These characteristics fit perfectly with the industrial mentality, where there are a multitude of interconnected devices between which there cannot be a communication cut due to the criticality of the processes they implement.
This article aims to comment, in addition to all the advantages that 5G provides to the industry, the different uses that can be given currently and the complexity of implementing these communications in some devices for subsequent deployment in the industry. Also, to specify possible vulnerabilities in communications using 5G networks.
External access provides great convenience to workers, as it allows them to access any industrial equipment deployed in the field from the office or even further away. However, this type of access can pose a number of security problems for the company. This article reviews the main problems and how to solve them.
Within the industrial world, systems can be detected that do not have all their cybersecurity capabilities activated. This can occur for a variety of reasons, but if detected, each case must be analyzed to get the most out of each device.
The ability to robustly configure programs, services or other nuances within industrial systems is called bastioning and allows, among other things, to prevent assets from having a large exposure to the network or the solutions deployed in the system from having vulnerabilities resulting from misconfiguration.
In this article, we will begin by explaining what hardening is and how to apply it to our industrial network, along with some good practices to follow.
In recent years, the constant technological evolution has made possible a large number of advances that would have been unthinkable years ago. In industrial environments, one of the latest developments that promises to stand out and is here to stay are virtual PLC.
The virtualization of these controllers will make it possible to decouple the hardware from the software, i.e. the software will be installed in the engineering stations, while the hardware will remain in another area outside the production area.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has experienced considerable growth in recent years, providing crucial improvements. However, it also has some limitations in terms of consumption, security, cost or scalability. In this blog, we will see how the appearance of LoRaWAN in this area can solve part of those limitations.
The physical protection of ports at hardware level within embedded systems allows control of the physical access interfaces, but what happens when these interfaces are necessary? Sometimes, access via JTAG or UART to systems is required for maintenance or modifications in different industrial processes. Thanks to these accesses, suppliers can access memory addresses to read or write, modify firmware, etc. Given the importance of these tasks, it is necessary to incorporate cybersecurity into the process and it is precisely on these measures that the subject of this article will focus.
Protection against fault injections, encryption of some memory sections within microcontrollers, or simple write protection are some of the defences that can be implemented to avoid problems within an industrial infrastructure
With the industrial revolution of Industry 4.0, industrial processes have become more intelligent, and this has led to the deployment of a greater number of devices.
All these deployments usually have a common point, being the gateways, which, after being deployed, are responsible for the translation of some protocols to the TCP/UDP frame or simply send the information to the cloud.
Being a point that gathers a large amount of data and capable of providing intelligence to industrial processes, industrial gateways have become a very desirable target for attackers.
Knowing the resources available when performing tasks of hardening a system, will allow us to optimize the time necessary to obtain a safer system. In addition, we have the possibility of using tools capable of auditing the system that identifies those configurations that are considered safe and which ones we could implement.
