summary
This article is an abridged version of a presentation given by 2024 ISA President Prabhu Soundarrajan at the ISA OT Cybersecurity Summit in June.
Sustainability, automation and cybersecurity: partners driving growth and governance
Sustainability represents a staggering economic opportunity. McKinsey estimates that the sustainable sector could generate $12 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 – just six years from now. Examining the data by sector, analysts found that the biggest opportunities are in transportation, buildings, power and water; agriculture and oil and gas are not far behind.
Pressure from investors and regulators, consumer demand, and employee attraction and retention – it’s arguable that improving sustainability is essential for businesses today to remain competitive. So why is there such a large gap between the goals set by policies and pressures and the actions taken by businesses?
These answers may sound familiar to anyone leading or supporting a digital transformation initiative. Many companies may lack talent and resources. Many may wonder how they will pay for the upgrades. Many may find their corporate structure or governance model is not set up to effectively execute on their plans. Whether driving sustainability measures or technology, many of the challenges are the same.
To compete in today’s marketplace, businesses must simultaneously achieve sustainability goals and profitability objectives — and automation technologies are helping many companies meet and exceed both.
Automation offers many well-documented ways to accelerate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) activities in manufacturing, industry, and many other sectors. For example, automation can help:
Minimize downtime and reduce waste by optimizing energy use and efficiency, reusing, refurbishment and recycling products and materials, monitoring equipment performance and performing predictive maintenance.
We can also help in ways that are not intuitive. Automation can also help you:
Provide objective data that shows the impact of sustainability measures Increase transparency and accountability, improving both safety and efficiency Help automation professionals focus their superior problem-solving skills on more difficult and complex sustainability problems
From improving safety assurance to increasing accountability and transparency, enterprise-level sustainability relies on automation. For more information on this topic, see ISA’s position paper “Achieving sustainability goals through automation.”
There is no automation without cybersecurity. In today’s environment, automation technologies cannot be deployed responsibly without taking steps to ensure the safety and security of the systems. ISA technical experts recognized this more than 20 years ago when they began developing the ISA/IEC 62443 series of standards.
Data collection and monitoring analytics enabled by automation are key game changers, whether it be sustainability or cybersecurity. Trust and data integrity are the constant threads of change in both areas.
Perhaps the most important intersection of cybersecurity and sustainability is ultimately in governance, which is about trust. Whether we are shareholders, the public, or regulators, we demand to understand exactly how companies operate. We want to know how trustworthy their data is. We want to know whether we can trust companies. What is a hack but a violation of trust?
According to a recent survey, 91% of cybersecurity experts agree that new sustainable technologies create new threat vectors. As a thought experiment, consider a cyberattack scenario that compromises the output of a solar power grid.
Imagine this cyberattack causing a power outage in a community, some of which may have been resistant to the adoption of renewable energy in the first place. Solar operators must now deal with the outage in addition to the public relations problem. Residents panic and rush the city’s system for a solution. Many are forced to miss work, causing immense disruption and inefficiency. Meanwhile, solar operators are scrambling to not only patch their systems and restore power, but also to restore reliability to their communities.
It is easy to imagine how a cyber attack could lead to wasted resources and disrupted operations, with knock-on effects on sustainability goals. Companies could redirect critical resources to recovery and repair, taking time, energy and investment away from efforts to minimize waste and optimize resource consumption. Only with a secure digital foundation can real progress be made towards a greener society.
How do we make it more sustainable? By measuring outcomes and continually improving. How do we ensure that our measurements and outcomes are trustworthy? By maintaining a safe and secure system. And the cycle continues.
Automation, cybersecurity, and sustainability are fundamentally interrelated. Investing in cybersecurity and sustainability drives business growth and responsible corporate governance, and organizations of all sizes are turning to the combine power of automation to ensure safety and efficiency in pursuing these goals.
This article is an abridged version of a presentation given by Prabhu Soundarrajan, President of the International Society of Automation (ISA), 2024, at the ISA OT Cybersecurity Summit, held on 19 June 2024 in London.
This feature originally appeared on ISA Interchange.
About the Author
Prabhu Soundarrajan has 20 years of experience in automation and ESG. He currently serves as ISA Chairman and has served as a member of the ISA Executive Committee since 2017 and has held several leadership roles within the association. He currently serves as Managing Partner at Kingston Capital and has held senior management roles at both Honeywell and Republic Services. He loves Golden State Warriors basketball and golf.
Did you enjoy this great article?
Check out our free e-newsletter for more great articles.
subscribe
Source link
