Abstract:

Operational Technology (OT) forms the backbone of European industry, overseeing essential functions such as power distribution, water treatment, and manufacturing operations. Protecting these systems is paramount as cyberattacks targeting OT can lead to infrastructure disruption, environmental harm, and human safety risks.

Safety concerns arise from the potential manipulation of OT systems, leading to physical damage or hazardous situations. The human toll of such events, like chemical spills or transportation accidents, could be catastrophic. Also the economic ramifications of cyber incidents on OT are substantial, with downtime translating to significant revenue losses and jeopardizing Europe's industrial competitiveness.

Safeguarding critical infrastructure is also imperative due to its central role in meeting societal needs. An attack on OT systems could result in widespread power outages, water supply interruptions, and disruptions in manufacturing, posing severe consequences.

Prioritizing OT cybersecurity research fosters collaboration between academia and industry, essential for building robust defenses and ensuring the stability and prosperity of Europe's critical infrastructure.

For this reason, an EU project was launched to address precisely this issue. Academic institutions, research facilities, public authorities and IT companies have joined forces to develop an online course to train companies to protect themselves against cyber attacks. An important aspect of this is to create awareness of the points of attack in a network, in an organization or even among employees.

The aim of the project is to develop a framework for a self-assessment tool and to test it with an appropriate target group consisting of representatives from several companies in the manufacturing industry in all participating countries. The results of this test will be used to create an interactive training course. This course will be presented at several events in the participating countries and also in training sessions. The focus of the training courses is to raise awareness of the problems faced by the industry due to the networking of machines and other production tools. in addition, the topics of cyber security, penetration testing and other relevant areas will be covered.

Academic research plays a pivotal role in fortifying OT cybersecurity defenses. By identifying vulnerabilities, developing detection systems, enhancing system resilience, and training professionals, universities and research institutions contribute essential expertise and tools to protect European production plants.

Keywords:

Operational Technology, Research Project, CyberSecurity.