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What good is cybersecurity if the bad guys can walk through the front door?
The last several months have seen a greater T emphasis than ever on the role of cyber-security in industrial manufacturing. This is with good reason, as the headlines made by the Stuxnet virus gave everyone in the industry pause regarding their cybersecurity countermeasures and just how effective they truly are.
Has the importance of physical security, however, gotten lost in the shuffle?
When it comes to the most important aspects of efficient and effective plant operations, having proper physical security measures in place is still just as critical as the flow of raw materials, efficient process control, a competent workforce, and yes, cybersecu-rity measures. Like cybersecurity, the core concept of physical security is to detect and prevent an intrusion. Even though it is a different kind of intrusion, consequences of failing to protect can be disastrous. For this reason, it is clear that physical security cannot be placed on the backburner.
What steps, therefore, should plants take and make sure they do not neglect when it comes to having an effective physical security system in place amid the cyber hoopla? The common approach remains "defense in depth." This is similar to the "layers-of-protection" philosophy used when designing integrated safety systems-i.e., ensuring multiple measures are deployed on top of each other so if one layer is penetrated, another one is there to further safeguard. With this system, no one layer or measure is responsible for being a catch all.
But recent trends in manufacturing (process safety incidents, increasingly tighter budgets, the aging workforce, regulations, and increased demand) are forcing plants to dig a little deeper with the defense-in-depth concept. Specifically, defense in depth means more today than just adding layers of protection-it means ensuring those layers are folded into the core plant controls along with other subsystems.
Why defense in depth?
At all times, plants are charged with protecting their people, assets, and the environment. At its core, physical security helps achieve this objective by keeping the wrong people on the right side of the fence to prevent incidents of vandalism, theft, and malicious acts.
Because protecting people, assets, and profitability demands a holistic point of view, visualizing what physical...