If your job mandate includes maintaining uptime then network security is an area you can’t afford to ignore. In the industrial space the biggest risk comes from accidental network introductions, such as a virus introduced by a supplier or an employee via a USB drive. Once that happens, your manufacturing or process control operations could be in jeopardy.

On the eve of April 8, Microsoft retired support for the Windows XP operating system (OS)– leaving millions of Windows XP users susceptible to accidental and deliberate security issues. Though the retirement had been long planned and with fair warning, industrial network users are just beginning to comprehend the ramifications.

Nobody likes the job of replacing a good team member when they retire. Yet, that is the job the manufacturing industry is faced with as a trusted component of the industrial application ecosystem steps down from active duty. That component is the Windows XP operating system (OS), a workhorse of a product that is pervasive in factories, energy facilities and many critical infrastructure systems around the world.

There’s no escaping the push to secure industrial applications. The end of support for Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system is just the latest situation that contributes to the need to make sure that industrial networks have cyber security measures in place.

You have likely never worried about the possibility of a high school geek doing some programming that affects your home water quality. Well, neither had I until I learnt that some municipal networks have no security between the network their schools use and the one that runs their water/wastewater facility.