With digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence and smart working culture making inroads in various sectors, including manufacturing, Indian companies are also gearing up to cope with the problems that come along with the technological advancement.

One such issue is of cyber security. There have been increasing instances of data leakage that have called for better and stringent actions to avoid the online menace. Industry leaders also feel the same, with manufacturing sector being no different.

Srinivas Thimmaiah, Programme Manager-Information Security, Automotive Company shared, “Cyber security is the buzzword today, however some years back IT and cyber security was not the mainstream business organ. The main objective was product and its manufacturing, but now with new vulnerabilities there is a drastic change”

Speaking at the Elets Manufacturing Innovation Summit in Delhi, Thimmaiah, added, “Every organization, if they want or not, have to go with cyber security. Especially when there are incidents happening across the industry. If you look at the transformation in terms of digitalisation, organisations have seen a very drastic change. Even the CIOs are focusing more on cyber security in terms of technology rather than the process of governance. So, cyber security is key for any organisation going forward.”

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Anish Gambhir, AVP, Arihant Electricals, echoed similar sentiments. He said, “Cyber security has become very important because the database that any organisation maintains that becomes utmost important as far as secrecy is concerned. So any organisation which is maintaining the database, they have to keep it confidential. The hackers try to steal the data, so cyber security is very important.”

“If we see about other industries, like Pharma or any other industry, there also cyber security plays a very important role. I come from power background. So there the data for power users, the amount of power sent from utility sectors, that is also maintained and secured, because power leakages and power thefts are very common. But now with the help of digitalization and security in place, it is quite easy to maintain data,” Gambhir added.

Anish was also of the view that as far as risk was concerned, with the increase in technology, the hackers had also increased, so risk was always there. But with evolving new systems, new ideas and new innovations, cyber security officers had to be equally equipped with latest tools and technologies so that they could implement new solutions and try to find out ways others were thinking.

Talking about the way forward, Anish also pointed out, “CIOs have to understand about new trends in the market, implement those skills within the team and organisation, tell them what passwords have to be kept, so that data remains safe.”

Meanwhile, RaviKiran S Avvaru, Head-IT & CISO, Toyota India was of the view that cyber security was not so mature in manufacturing area, may be because of less awareness, and said that needed to be worked upon.