Manufacturers throughout the world deal with sensitive information every day in the course of manufacturing data management. Products' technical specifications, testing & quality data, warranty records, device histories, and other similar documents are examples of such sensitive information. Making the leap to trusting a cloud-based application or service provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, etc., with sensitive data is a big deal for many manufacturers. However, many industrial companies are still hesitant to put their data in the cloud.
One reason is that their data is very confidential and sensitive, and another is the potential risks and consequences associated with cloud storage of manufacturing data. Misconfiguration, poor data governance, insufficient access controls, inadequate security controls, and questionable regulatory compliance are a few examples of vulnerabilities that might arise as a result of this.
Nevertheless, the processing of their manufacturing data on the cloud and exploiting this capability is resulting in powerful analytical insights that are being used to enhance their processes. This is made possible by having an appropriate structure, a dedicated cloud, and a unidirectional data flow. The most important security advantages of cloud storage for your manufacturing data are:
Benefits of Cloud Storage for Your Manufacturing Data
Only by backing up your data to the cloud can you guarantee that it will always be secure and easy to access. Even better, cloud storage companies that retain multiple copies of your information saved in the cloud are the greatest prospects for use as disaster recovery systems.
When you store your information in the cloud, it is replicated over many servers. This means that if one of the data centers were to go down, your information would still be secure and controlled by the other data centers. Only your data would be lost in the unlikely event that the storage provider's data centers all collapsed or were destroyed, which would never happen since a cloud storage service is made up of lots of data centers.
Suppose your files are solely saved locally on your system. In that case, they are at risk of being compromised by hackers who may be able to get access to your system and then hold your information for ransom. Not to mention all of the many problems that may occur with the equipment that would result in the irretrievable loss of your data.
Simply said, storing your information in the cloud is the most intelligent course of action to take. Fortunately, the majority of cloud storage providers include encryption for your data. A technique known as encryption transforms the data in your files into an unintelligible string of code that can only be deciphered with the appropriate encryption key.
In addition, zero-knowledge encryption is a method of encrypting data in which you are the only one who has the decryption key. Because the encryption takes place on your local system before the files are ever uploaded to the cloud storage provider, you are the only one who will ever be able to read the contents of those encrypted files.
Cloud Storage of Manufacturing Data is More Secure Now!
This statement from LNS Research, a top autonomous market research agency, sums up the security concern for cloud manufacturing software possibly best:
It is more common for security to improve after migrating to the Cloud rather than worsen since cloud providers put in a lot of effort to make sure their underlying systems are resilient and updated often to deal with new threats. To achieve optimal security and correctly maintained systems, manufacturers should prioritize plant security in collaboration with their MES and plant software providers. Refrain from getting taken in by unprotected, out-of-date technology!
