Appendix: General Cybersecurity Topics

While we have discussed the topic of secure by design in the context of industrial control systems, we would like to provide additional thoughts around IT and Operational Technology (OT) cybersecurity from Chapter 5, OT and Industrial Control Systems, and Chapter 6, Enabling Industrial IoT.

The importance of security in manufacturing facilities cannot be over-emphasized as the world braces against cyber threats and attacks. As we have covered, IT incidents result in application outages. In contrast, OT incidents result in real-world consequences, potentially life-threatening accidents, or production and revenue losses.

The challenge here is that we are delving deeper into OT and connecting to systems within this book. This effort comes with risk and the need to mitigate that risk as much as possible with the intrusion of IT into the OT domain. As an architect, the last thing you want to do is introduce hazards or new security holes when...