Industrial CyberSecurity 4.0: Preparing the Operational Technicians for Industry 4.0

In the context of Industry 4.0, industrial facilities are connected to corporate data networks and are frequently administered remotely over the Internet. However, these new technologies have brought new threats into the world of industrial automation, since the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) in place today were designed to operate for decades, and many of them were developed without any serious regard to IT security. Hence, the modern labor market in the industry needs trained technicians and engineers capable to identify potential cybersecurity threats and able to respond adequately when an attack is identified. Personnel training in these skills is costly, as experienced and skilled trainers are required for an ever-changing technological environment. In this context, InCyS 4.0 (Industrial CyberSecurity 4.0) is a 2-year KA2 project co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, that aims to create open source educational material to address training of industrial production technicians for handling cyber-security vulnerabilities. In order InCyS4.0 to assure that the developed training material fits the needs of European Industries, it conducted a field research in every partner country. Field research had the form of an anonymous questionnaire targeting the IT personnel of local industries. Aim of the research was the investigation of the security weaknesses of the participating enterprises and the extraction of the profile of the industrial IT engineers, so the project adapts the training content to the feedback. This paper describes the rationale, aims and objectives of the project, presents the outcomes of the research and outlines the proposed course material.