Manufacturers face huge disruption from plant security

Although Infonetics finds companies losing an average of 2% of annual revenues, plant security systems firm Innominate believes that could be the tip of a dangerous iceberg. “The losses incurred by industrialised companies can be far greater, both in financial terms and damage to reputation,” says Joachim Fietz, Innominate CEO. “What is particularly interesting about the [Infonetics report] is that in most cases security attacks were responsible for a degradation in service and in a few cases a denial of service attack,” he says. “However, a virus that has entered the manufacturing environment could result in the production process being halted completely, or worse still a program being corrupted, with quality issues not identified until the manufacturing has taken place.” Fietz also alludes to the potential for damage to client relationships and the cost implications of materials wastage and time to market issues. “When viewed from this perspective the estimate of $3 0million could be conservative if set within the context of the manufacturing industry. Companies need to increase industrial network security now to avoid the consequences of an information security breach.”