Protecting Against Data Breaches

The publication Industry Week offered manufacturers insight last week into just how vulnerable we are to data breaches and suggested a few strategies to mitigate the risk.

“With the IoT growing exponentially, connectedness offers an exciting avenue to improved productivity and profitability for manufacturers,” the article said. “But that same connection offers a potentially catastrophic vulnerability for your company and its facilities.”

The article quoted Doug Cutting, chief architect of Cloudera, who said this about the risk of breaches: “Technology can be defeated, we’ve seen again and again. Just because you encrypt something, just because you put up a firewall, it doesn’t mean people aren’t going to get in, just like just because you have police, it doesn’t mean people aren’t going to break laws.”

The article offers these tips for protecting your company in the age of IoT:

• Be aware of the security differences among IoT devices. Any IoT device connected to the cloud provides a greater opportunity for outside sources to compromise and breach your operations. Build security into these products from the beginning.
• Don’t underestimate seemingly small threats. Even a single rogue hacker can halt production for a shift or longer.
• Always have a data security plan, experts advise, starting with risk and threat analysis, right through to security policy mapping, incident response policies and procedures, testing and review.
• Keep in mind your legal responsibilities in the case of a possible breach. State statutes, for example, may require you notify affected customer, as well as regulators in each state where at least one of those customers lives.
• Never forget the human aspect of security. Inform your employees on policies regarding the use of confidential data, and perform regular training. Nefarious attachments to emails are the point of entry for about 40% of breaches, according to the Data Breach Investigations Report and Industry Week.   S