Role of Cyber Security In The 4th Industrial Revolution

With each passing day, the latest technologies such as cloud-computing, IoT and robotics are disrupting the traditional manufacturing process. With automation, IoT, Cloud & Edge computing, Robotics and data analytics are making production processes smarter, intelligent and more productive, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 has been demonstrably evident. 

The world has become digital. Majority of the world’s population is now online, contributing to the digital economy, which is fundamental to our economic growth, as well as being the creator of trillion-dollar companies. India has the opportunity, not just to catch up with the leaders but to emerge as a global leader itself.

Technology is transforming businesses in many different ways with most of the industries relying heavily on connected technology and software as part of their daily operations, whether it is customer-facing websites, cloud platforms, email services, network infrastructure, computers used by employees, and more. This leads to increasing cyber-security risks. Hackers are increasingly exploiting flaws in software and hardware, and by doing so, they are able to hack into corporate systems and cause all sorts of damages.

New challenges and vulnerabilities are faced by cybersecurity professionals in India and the rest of the world every day, putting multiple organisations at risk. Digitization has not only paved the way towards new opportunities but has also driven the industry towards multiple unforeseen threats, highlighting the need for cybersecurity, making it a continuous, perpetual, always-on and a proactive process rather than a single point or a one-time activity.

For cyber criminals, vulnerabilities in software and hardware present a backdoor into targeted businesses – and they are constantly trying to find and leverage them. With this in mind, cyber security teams must be proactive in discovering and fixing vulnerabilities so they cannot be exploited. 

 
The year 2020 has been a roller-coaster year with full of cybersecurity attacks. India has seen a 37% increase in cyber-attacks in 2020 as compared to 2019, witnessing the malware to cross 4 Lakh daily and a total of 696,938 cyber-attacks. India is among the largest consumers of the internet, 3rd largest in the planet, after USA and China. 

Now, the Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices are a pressing concern for security teams. Companies invest large sums of money to keep cyber-criminals out of industrial systems, but what happens when the hacker is already inside?

Secondly, we have also seen growth in the sextortion attack in January. Most of these attacks targeted English-speaking users including 3,980 in India. All of the sextortion campaigns use the same modus operandi, with scammers sending emails to users claiming they recorded the user during private, intimate moments, and threatening to expose them to the public unless the victim pays money to the attacker. 

Now talking about the 5G roll out in the country, it’ll be the most transformative communications technology in a generation and enable a universe of new services, including advanced energy management capabilities that will be critical to solving growing energy and sustainability challenges. Telecom giants Jio and Airtel are announcing the plans for 5G in India, awaiting the spectrum auction slated for March 2021 and government approvals, but new research highlights the practical challenges of 5G energy management facing telecommunications operators. 

Estimates suggest 5G networks can be up to 90% more efficient per traffic unit than their 4G predecessors, but they still require far more energy due to increased network density, heavy reliance on IT systems and infrastructure, and increased network use and accelerated traffic growth.

Telecom operators making meaningful energy and cost reductions are doing so by evaluating the entire ecosystems around their network operations – people, objectives, infrastructure and partners. Because of the reliance on IT to enable 5G applications, a high degree of collaboration will be required across operators, OEMs and infrastructure providers, and customers to ensure deployments are optimized and every possible efficiency is pursued. Operators are deploying 5G networks to grow new revenues. 

However, some experts speaking on 5G say, the shift to 5G will create new security challenges, driving significant traffic increases, consuming more bandwidth, and requires more speed and less latency. For this, a combination of multiple networks, clouds, CDNs, and edge are integrated, exposing new ways for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities.

S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA