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How Can We Keep Industrial Internet Systems Secure?

Tripwire Guest Authors
Industrial Security

The Industrial Internet is on the verge to becoming the largest disruption to the global economy since the Internet revolution in the 1990s. According to GE, it will have a $32.2 trillion impact, representing 46 percent of today’s GDP.

As the Industrial Internet continues to grow and have an impact on the way we work and live, it is imperative that industry players join together with a shared vision to set policies and recommendations for common building blocks for all aspects of the Industrial Internet: architecture, interoperability, platforms, security, standards, and so forth.

The Industrial Internet Consortium was founded in March 2014 by AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM, and Intel to achieve this goal. An open membership, international not-for-profit consortium, the Industrial Internet Consortium is setting the architectural framework and direction of the Industrial Internet.

Since its founding, the consortium has grown to more than 220 member organizations – including Tripwire‘s parent organization, Belden – hailing from 26 countries.

The Industrial Internet Consortium focuses on building an ecosystem, testbed development, and Technology and Security. The priority for the member companies forming the Industrial Internet Consortium is to build together a safe, reliable and secure Industrial Internet.

Security is a hot topic for IoT technologies. Networks originally designed to be isolated are now exposed to continuous attacks of ever-increasing sophistication. The continuing explosion of connected devices provides opportunities for unprecedented growth and performance gains in industrial systems, as well as unprecedented increases in risks to plant personnel, to society and the environment at large, as well as to the businesses which operate industrial processes.

On Thursday, October 29th, the Industrial Internet Consortium hosted a security-themed TweetChat, so that members and nonmembers alike could swap stories, brainstorm new ideas and come together to ensure that Industrial Internet systems are secure.

Here are some of the highlights:

Question 1

Some great responses!

Question 2

Check out the infographic Sarah mentions below:

Question 3

“Bit Stew” sums this up nicely…

Question 4

Great to see everyone in agreement. Open standards it is.

Question 5

Thanks, Belden and Smart Industry.

Question 6

Some solid advice here.

These are only a few answers from the TweetChat. To discover more, please take a look at this Storify from the hashtag : https://storify.com/kmcwalsh/security-tweetchat-oct-29-2015.

 

About the Author: Julie Pike is the Senior Digital Content Manager for the Industrial Internet Consortium. Besides content creation for press release, articles, blog posts and business development literature, Julie is responsible for all Industrial Internet Consortium social media channels including, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Julie received her BA in Communications from Suffolk University, spending a year of her studies in Madrid, Spain. Follow her on Twitter at @julie_pike.

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this guest author article are solely those of the contributor, and do not necessarily reflect those of Tripwire, Inc.

Title image courtesy of ShutterStock