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In 2018, there could well be 1.3 million robots in factories around the world. According to a recent book What to Do When Machines Do Everything from Cognizant Technology Solutions, 12% of jobs will be performed by automated systems over the next 10 to 15 years.
The rate at which companies are turning to robotic solutions is obviously high — and with that comes the potential for these systems to be hacked. Recent studies show that the potential for cyberattacks against robots is great, and that operators need to take the necessary precautions.
THE CURRENT STATE OF ROBOT SECURITY
A recent report (http://robosec.org/downloads/paper-robosecsp-2017.pdf), written in the spring of 2017, summarized the current state of industrial robotic security. Researchers in the Department of Electronic, Information, and Bioengineer-ing at the Politecnico di Milano and the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro conducted the study. The researchers reached out to 50 different experts in the robotic field, which included researchers; engineers from companies like ABB, KUKA, and Comau; safety engineers; and the chair of the Industrial Robotics group at EU Robotics.
About 30% of the respondents found the default safety measures in their robotic machines too limiting and 60% chose to customize the parameters for specific use cases. The survey highlighted the issues inherent to robot development cycle programs, in that operators are not accountable for any changes that may occur to the robot programming.
Some 28% of the respondents did not enforce access control policies, and 76% had never performed a professional cyber-security assessment test on their infrastructure. The most alarming number: 30% of the robots were accessible from the internet, and 50% of respondents...