During the last week of september CyberNorth was organized as an online event. A morning full of interesting lectures and insights from both industry and academia. The participants have the opportunity listened to three company representatives who presented their view when it comes to digitization and cybersecurity.
The theme for the event was:
Digitization is increasing in the process industry – so is the interest from cybercriminals.
A major challenge is that the investments for automation that have been made in the past are large, but often not developed in view of the degree of digital security required today. Upcoming CyberNorth is implemented online and here you get to listen to speakers from the industry and the challenges that exist when information systems and operating systems are connected.
First presenter was Mats Karlsson Landré, Security Advisor, Atea. Mats talked about the importance of getting people and technology to work together to achieve “good” safety. Mats highlighted the human aspect of OT security: The importance of having good “integration” between people in the same way as between systems.
Afterwards, Samuel Holmström, CEO, Lundqvist Trävaru AB presented about their digitalization journey from a messy company in the wood industry, to representing a company at the absolute forefront of digitalization. The company has received attention as Sweden’s most connected company. Samuel talked about their systematic information security efforts.
Lars-Gunnar Marklund, IT Security & Risk Manager (CISO), Boliden AB was next in line. He presented Boliden’s perspective when it comes to larger security programs where more and more focus has been IT security more recently. The mining industry is facing a major transformation, where automation and remote control will be central parts. Are the companies prepared for this change? That question was something that Boliden’s board asked themselves, which led to that IT-security is now addressed in the new safety program within the company.
The morning ended with Anton Holmström & Simon Andersson, PhD students at Luleå University of Technology, sharing their results from previous studies where company representatives from the process industry and the IT sector were among the respondents. Anton spoke about his research in Operational Technology, OT and its cross-functional challenges, where the threat landscape in the process industry has been in focus. How can technical and organizational aspects work together to improve digital security? Simon presented his work on trust in connection with information classification. Where a model has been developed to facilitate the work of classifying the importance of trust in relation to Confidentiality, Integrity and Accessibility.
After each presentation, the participants were given the chance to ask questions to the speakers, an interested audience contributed with many thoughts and new insights. The event was arranged in a collaboration between CYNIC, an Interreg Nord project and the UNDIS project within PiiA – Process Industrial IT and Automation.