ZIUR launches a project to evaluate the cybersecurity of products in the Machine Tool sector
It is developed in collaboration with AFM and aims to improve the competitiveness of companies
For one year, four leading companies in the Machine Tool sector will participate in a process to evaluate the level of cybersecurity of their products and the degree of compliance with the demands posed by international regulations. The final goal of the project is to turn Gipuzkoa into a benchmark in the evaluation and certification of industrial cyber-secure products.
To this end, ZIUR has defined a methodology that allows the evaluation and certification of industrial products following the security requirements of the international standard IEC 62443, and also taking as a reference the Draft Regulation of the European Commission, known as the Cyber Resilience Act. .
The work will be carried out by an evaluation laboratory, independent of ZIUR, which must accompany the companies throughout the entire process.
As is the case in other sectors, machine tools perceive cybersecurity as a competitive advantage both from a technical and business point of view and which must be supported by adopting all protection mechanisms against malicious intrusions into their networks. possible cases of sabotage or accidental tampering.
Both the European Union and other international organizations are promoting new requirements and demands regarding cybersecurity that industrial products and the supply chains of large manufacturers in different sectors must also comply with.
From this perspective, the general director of ZIUR, Koldo Peciña, considers that “this project is of strategic importance for the industrial sector of Gipuzkoa since it will have a high impact on the promotion of industrial cybersecurity.” In this sense, he considers that an activity of evaluation and certification of cybersecurity of industrial products will make it easier for the industrial sector to “position itself more competitively in a global market, anticipating the requirements of the market itself and the increasingly demanding international regulations.”
At AFM it is understood that “the machine tool sector sells, above all, trust to its customers through products of a very high technological level. This trust is demonstrated from different areas, but one that is incipient and for which we would need approved and simple certification mechanisms is located in cybersecurity.”
Four objectives
Machine tools are a reference sector in Gipuzkoa and are in the midst of a digital transformation process. In this context, this project represents an opportunity not only to respond to a growing market demand, but to position the sector and the territory as a pioneer space in the evaluation and certification of the cybersecurity of machines and services as an element of competitiveness.
The pilot project that is now being launched has four notable objectives: analyze the validity of the methodology developed by ZIUR as a future tool for the cybersecurity evaluation of industrial products; identify the degree of compliance and cybersecurity maturity of the industrial products analyzed; study the evaluation capabilities of industrial products by the business community of the territory and, finally, help the Machine Tool sector to understand the cybersecurity demands posed by its market due to the different regulatory requirements.