With manufacturing now officially incorporated into the UK’s CNI sector, its overall levels of resilience and security must be reconsidered, incorporating best practice and technical innovations from other companies from across the sector (i.e. utilities and transport firms).
A key aspect of this will involve expanding manufacturers’ definition of resilience beyond the safety and performance of physical machines to the integrity of the growing volumes of data generated on-site, and the cross-site connections that are increasingly powering tomorrow’s interconnected workflows.
This is more than just a ‘nice to have’. The recently announced Cyber Security and Resilience Bill is just the latest step in governments around the world taking proactive steps to secure public services – and the digital platforms and supply chains that support them – in an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape. As we close out Critical Infrastructure Security Month, the need for new standards of security and resilience across the entire CNI sector has never been higher, so let’s explore the steps manufacturers can take to proactively establish this across their operations.
Optimising the resilience of manufacturing data lakes
The rise of ‘smart’ technologies within manufacturing operations is transforming the sector’s workflows, but also significantly increasing the volumes of data that must now be stored and managed in full compliance with all CNI regulations, including the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, EU NIS 2, and eCAF. Storing these large volumes of structured and unstructured data onsite will likely prove impractical, introducing a serious financial and operational burden, but at the same time, the need for real-time visibility of manufacturing operations, along with increasingly complex security and compliance challenges, means a full-scale move to the Cloud will not necessarily be viable.
Colocation offers an alternative way forward here, offering manufacturers a single answer to a range of data hosting challenges. By relocating specific volumes of data to dedicated space in external, geographically dispersed data centres, while keeping others on-site – potentially as part of a wider hybrid Cloud strategy – manufacturers will enjoy a whole new level of flexibility in terms of how they store and manage their data that will, in turn, bring them up to the standards of operational resilience that CNI demands.
Of course, putting all this into practice requires a world-class hosting environment…
How Vysiion are providing the foundation for more resilient manufacturing across the UK
This is why Vysiion continues to maintain our presence in the Tier III Ark data centres – the Government’s hosting environment of choice and the only data centres with pan-government accreditation at all security levels. As an active presence in these highly secure, eco-friendly hosting environments, we have helped organisations across a range of sectors develop approaches to data hosting that support the most complex workflows and compliance obligations, offering hands-on support throughout the migration process to minimise any disruption. This includes connections to the secure private networks utilised across manufacturing operations, where necessary.
Our presence in the Ark data centres, combined with our deep experience around ‘smart’ technologies, the ongoing convergence of IT and OT, and the manufacturing sector’s unique workflows and operational models – plus comprehensive cyber security capabilities – means we are able to help you manage your data in the way that best suits your operations, your budget, and your evolving compliance obligations.
Just contact us if you would like to discuss your own manufacturing operations’ data hosting requirements in greater depth.
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