Making digital industrial infrastructures increasingly secure, in order to prevent a cyber attack on critical systems from having serious repercussions on the availability of essential services to citizens and on their safety. It is the goal of the agreement (a memorandum of understanding) signed by Leonardo and Siemens digital industries. Thanks to this agreement, the two companies will be able to create a platform capable of providing an integrated offer of cybersecurity solutions for IT and OT technologies (Information technology and Operational technology) dedicated to digital industrial infrastructures, particularly in the energy, oil & gas sectors. gas and industry.
The main area of intervention, explain the technicians of the two groups, “will concern the resilience with respect to accidents and cyber attacks of the automation and connectivity systems that monitor and supervise assets, equipment and processes of critical infrastructures”. After all, with the growing use of digitization, energy and industrial plants are increasingly interconnected and distributed; a situation that offers opportunities in terms of competitiveness but requires particular attention to cybersecurity.
At the center of the agreement, therefore, there is above all the Ot security, which has repercussions on the physical world, with impacts both on security both on safety, given that, within critical infrastructures, it involves people, technologies and processes. In recent years, attacks targeting OT systems have become increasingly frequent. A striking example is the hacking attempt suffered, in 2021, by the Oldsmar (Florida) aqueduct: by accessing the computer that controls the water network, a saboteur managed, for a short time, to increase the release of sodium hydroxide (used in small quantities to regulate the acidity of the water). Fortunately, the attack was blocked, avoiding the risk of poisoning over 15,000 people.
The collaboration between Leonardo and Siemens aims precisely to avoid similar events; it will, in fact, say the technicians, «complete protection: from threat intelligencefor the detection of cyber threats to OT infrastructures, for their protection, both with attack monitoring and management services, based on the experience of the Global security operation center of Leonardo in Chieti, and with the integration on Siemens technological systems of products for the prevention and response to incidents concerning individual connected devices”. Thanks to this agreement, explains Leonardo’s CEO, Alessandro Profumo, «Leonardo and Siemens can create new synergies based on complementary technologies and skills, with the aim of developing together solutions capable of responding more effectively to the growing cybernetic challenges in the sector industry and energy”.
While Giuliano Busetto, head of Siemens digital industries, underlines that, thanks to the agreement, Leonardo’s undoubted ability to integrate systems with our technology will be combined, creating a single synergy and proposal on the market. Our goal, therefore, is to create further value for the Italian industry and help our country in the digital transformation”. In addition to providing for an integrated commercial proposal both with joint solutions and with proprietary products and services of the two companies, the agreement also regulates training in the cybersecurity field, with the definition of a catalog of courses dedicated to the Ot sector.