Downloads, White Papers

Protecting Plant Systems: Protecting Networks
by Mark Kovacs, EnteGreat

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Paper Overview
Manufacturing plants are more dependent than ever on IT systems that support operations.  Consequently, the operational integrity of plant systems is paramount. Manufacturing plants face a wide assortment of potential problems concerning networks, data integrity, systems infrastructure, applications, and application support. At any moment, a failure could occur; servers or databases could crash, a network can fail, or an operator work station could break. Any of these could cause an operating disruption and temporary or permanent data loss. The consequences can range from minor annoyances to major crises.  If a network fails or a server crashes, and critical applications cannot function, the entire plant's ability to continue production may be shut down for hours or longer.

In some industries, product cannot be shipped if production information or regulatory data is missing or is not available in a timely fashion. Loss or corruption of regulatory data may mean that perfectly good finished products may have to be scrapped. If good, solid support programs are not implemented, the mechanisms for responding to and preventing problems may be woefully inadequate. Fortunately, there are ways to address these problems and significantly reduce these risks. 

Protecting The Plant is a six-part series of white papers that addresses the broad and disparate nature of the challenges affecting plant systems. The second paper in this series addresses protecting networks. 

Paper Outline

• Introduction
• The Nature of Network Problems and How to Assess Threats and Vulnerabilities
• Envisioning a Logical Solution
• Designing the Architecture for a Physical Solution
• The Importance of Continuously Improving Network Security
• Conclusion

About the Author
Mark Kovacs has over 22 years of total experience with more than 10 years in the Life Science sector. As Director of Information Technology with a pharmaceutical company, Mark established both enterprise and manufacturing systems standards. In addition to his pharmaceutical experience, Mark's Life Sciences experience also include Biotechnologies and Medical Device manufacturing, ranging from simple point solutions to complex multinational deployments involving various governmental regulatory agencies.

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