IoT solutions are increasingly used in Danish companies. Digitizing processes can increase efficiency and strengthen companies’ competitiveness and growth. But this also makes companies more vulnerable to cyber attacks.
A new project must make Danish business better able to deal with precisely that threat.
Danish production must be made cyber-secure
The project is called Cybersafe Production in Denmark (CyPRo) and is a collaboration between the Alexandra Institute, FORCE Technology, DAMRC (Danish Advanced Manufacturing Research Center), Ugla Insights and the Institute for Business Development and Technology at Aarhus University. With DKK 13 million in support from the Industry Fund, the project aims to create common ground on IoT security and ensure a collective boost to the market for IoT products.
Over the next few years, the CyPro project will strengthen the IoT security of 100 Danish industrial companies. This must be done by giving them knowledge so that they can deal with the threats they face. A number of tools must also be developed which can improve IoT security widely in Danish industry.
“When you introduce smart sensors, you also introduce some risks. We must therefore give the companies insight into what kind of threats they are facing. Some probably have an assumption that their suppliers have it under control. But we must have changed the way of thinking so that it becomes an explicit requirement that the companies make. They must know how to handle the risk of being hacked,” says Gert Læssøe Mikkelsen, head of the Security Lab at the Alexandra Institute.
It is among other areas in production, energy management and water supply that these years see a large growth in IoT products in industry. It is particularly important to increase security around these products, as they potentially pose a risk in critical infrastructure. That risk was not present in the same way when the solutions worked using traditional and mechanical solutions.
The project must therefore look at how to technically secure the companies, so that the purchased IoT solutions are also secure. The project must also look at how IoT security is handled organizationally in the companies, and how IoT security is sold and valued internally and externally in customer-supplier relationships.
