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Some companies see cybersecurity as a competitive advantage

October 4, 2019 at 14:27

Alexandr Värä attended HI Tech & Industry Scandinavia fair in Herning, Denmark. Here’s what he learned from meeting different tech and industrial people.

It was an interesting experience to attend Hi Tech & Industry Scandinavia in Herning, Denmark, this week. I had various discussions about cybersecurity standardization, developing legislation, and companies' preparedness.

hi-tech-nixu
Our Nixu crew at HI Tech & Industry.

Based on conversations with over 60 people in sales and product management positions, I learned the following:

  • The majority of prominent vendors in Industry 4.0 perceive cybersecurity as being a primary responsibility of the production owners and system integrators. Hence it's not an issue if the vendor's products aren't secure.
  • The majority of production owners don't have cybersecurity requirements for component vendors.
  • Only three people knew any cybersecurity-related legislation exists.
  • Generally, people assume that their products (robots, AGVs) are operating an isolated network. Therefore, there's no need for securing products. That is until they confirm that they receive telemetry data from devices automatically in their cloud.
  • Some companies value cybersecurity and even had marketing material available about it. Most of the marketing material contained an indication of conformance with different standards, as well as cooperation statements with cybersecurity companies.
  • Three people (vendors) saw cybersecurity as their competitive advantage that helped them to win business. 

I want to think that companies are investing much more in cybersecurity than their sales and product people are aware of. If so, why not address one's investments in sales and marketing to achieve a competitive advantage? At the very least, it would help sales and product people to avoid awkward situations in front of a potential customer.

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