Industrial safety and security in times of COVID-19 and beyond

The third in a series of webinars on ‘Ensuring Industrial Safety and Security in times of COVID-19 and beyond’ organized by UNIDO brought together experts from Accenture Security, Europol, Kaspersky Lab, and the University of Oxford on 20 July 2020.

In the face of numerous challenges brought by a growing number of remote working arrangements and lockdowns, experts see a window of opportunity for companies that undergo a digital transformation to improve cybersecurity. Even though cybersecurity risks are not new, many companies and industries still do not have sufficient capacities to properly secure their operational technologies due to a lack of awareness.

In recent years, attacks on critical infrastructure, production technology and healthcare institutions have become increasingly damaging. UNIDO and world-leading experts argue that cybersecurity must be central to companies’ risk mitigation measures, as the available technologies are too vulnerable to cyberattacks. Organizations should carefully identify assets requiring protection and ensure the necessary monitoring that will enable them to react in a timely and efficient manner if something goes wrong. In this context, continued adaption of monitoring and control systems is critical to safety and security, and will need the international cooperation to disseminate best practice examples to minimize the exposure to cyberattacks globally.

To raise awareness of the emerging remote auditing, monitoring and control systems in times of COVID-19 and beyond, UNIDO has been leading the expert discussion within a series of webinars on “Ensuring Industrial Safety and Security”. Such systems have proven to be an effective tool for companies to ensure that performance indicators are met, while also taking into account the safety and security dimension. In the aftermath of the explosion in Beirut, the international community has vigorously engaged in the discussions about the necessity to establish a new safety culture, which is a manifold yet largely underexplored issue.

Read the full article here.

Find out more about the webinars here.

For more information contact Farrukh Alimdjanov (F.Alimdjanov [at] unido.org)