Belden Design Seminar

These days, industrial network security is a top of mind concern for managers in industrial automation organizations. However, there isn’t a simple formula for applying it and many engineers either don’t know where to start or don’t know how to develop practical skills in this area.

Add on the challenge of trying to implement something new, while still getting the day job done ... and all in all it can be overwhelming.

Due to a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, our industry has historically resisted, rather than embraced, emerging technology. Thankfully – and not a moment too soon – experts have started to take advantage of the technologies at their disposal in one key area: security.

Previously we looked at the question of “Why are PLCs so insecure?” Today we are going to come at SCADA security from another angle, which is “Why is securing Industrial Networks different than securing IT Networks?” We will also look at three ways to address these differences.

For those of us passionate about industrial security it is great to see it being integrated into networking training as it was at the Belden Industrial Ethernet Infrastructure Design Seminar held near Chicago earlier this week.