17. August 2018

Networked production has to become a strategy, cyber security a matter of quality

Networked system environments, autonomous production, and intelligent machines – production plants develop into safety-critical digital complexes. In the era 4.0 digital networking is a factor contributing to the competitiveness and economic growth of companies. This can only be promising when networked structures and procedures are at best protected against attacks from cyber space.

The implementation of contemporary security and quality management concepts as well as industrial and IT security have to be considered holistically. From the perspective of the DGQ (German Society for Quality) this requires an even more active merger of politics, industry, science and society: Jointly we have to increase cyber security in the business location Germany, fix it as factor for quality and define standards.

Security as factor for quality: The DGQ joins the alliance for cyber security

The DGQ has pursued the digitisation of the industry for some time. For this reason it is a new member of the alliance for cyber security of the BSI (Federal Office for Information Security). From the perspective of the DGQ the alliance is an excellent platform for the necessary and solution-oriented exchange between politics, industry, science and society regarding cyber security. With its participation the DGQ supports the goal to consolidate the awareness for the importance of this issue especially for the networked production. Not only the IT department is responsible for cyber security in the context industry 4.0 but also production management – they have to work together to detect possible security holes, for example in production control. The joint and comprehensive perspective regarding possible risks of networking within the company is necessary here.

At the beginning of this year the DGQ identified key competencies and trend topics in an online questionnaire regarding the topic „Digital shift – Where is your position?“. The results show that the collection, processing and evaluation of data are of utmost importance for the quality assurance in companies. Besides developing specialist competencies it is necessary to fix and promote cyber security and data protection as relevant quality features. Quality has to become a target figure in industry 4.0. Together with the other partners in the alliance the DGQ wants to concentrate its long-term experience and competence in the sector of quality assurance and management to create modern production and security structures.