Driving Our Economy Forward: Smart Factory Institute Cyber Security

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — Strong cybersecurity is vital in today’s business climate.  In May, we paid a visit to the Smart Factory for a lesson in heading off hackers.  This conference helped numerous businesses protect their investment.

It’s just a small example of how they continue to drive our economy forward.

Denise Hall with Peak Performance Smart Factory said, “Today, we are talking about critical networks and manufacturing and really focusing on how manufacturers can protect themselves from cyber criminals and cyber-attacks. We’ve had a featured panel of that included both KENCO group and Mueller Industries. And they were able to share with us what their best practices are and some of their experiences with attacks.”

Andy Davies, Senior VP of Info Technology with Mueller Water Products said, “We had a cyber incident uh back in October of last year. And so, a lot of a lot of findings came out of that and all the learnings come out of that. And it’s good to be able to share what we can, with other colleagues uh other manufacturing colleagues in the industry. We’re $1.2-, $1.3 billion organization. We have multiple manufacturing facilities you know in; you know… across Tennessee and Alabama. And headquarters located in Atlanta, Georgia, predominantly a North American organization. But we do have facilities over in Israel and the United Kingdom, China, etc.”

Davies also said, “It can happen to anybody. It will happen to everybody eventually. Everybody needs to be prepared for it. You got to put the plan in place. I think there’s opportunity to do things that are free still. But you got to think about your operational technology as being a threat too. So, how do you protect that operational technology? How do you keep your business operating in the event of a threat as well needs to be managed?”

Bill Pickel, Senior Security Engineer with Kenco Logistics said, “It’s happening to someone right now. So, it’s… rampant. And you’re next, you know, whether you like to admit it or not. You’re on that list of somebody that’s going to get attacked. Now, do they breach you? Are you able to detect it early and prevent the damage a lot of that depends on having an individual who’s identified the risk in your environment; knows what to look for and knows what the kill chain is. How do I stop this attack once it’s discovered? One place you’re going to beef up your defenses, it’s the front door. And that is email. You’re talking about 80-90% of attacks come in through that front door.”

“So, educate your people. Make them a human fire wall. They should recognize what a suspicious email looks like. Every organization needs a security department of some sort. A lot of times, it’s one IT guy and they just give him the role of, “you’re also in charge of security as well as Network desktop and everything else.” But you can’t just send them off one time for classes. You don’t just come through IT and have that knowledge. It’s very specialized,” said Pickel. “So, you need to send someone to training for cyber security. But with those certifications usually come continuing education requirements to maintain your certification.”