By David Greenfield , Director of Content/Editor-in-Chief
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A key difference between the enterprise IT space and the plant floor is the detrimental effect some IT cybersecurity approaches can have on the real-time operation and downtime avoidance aspects of day-to-day production operations. To be more specific, consider the growing cybersecurity focus on continuous network monitoring. If active network monitoring measures slow down the delivery of your email or web access, or even crash the email server temporarily, it’s not the end of the world and is a small price to pay for securing the front office network. However, if such measures impact high-speed motion control or bring production to a halt, the price tag can run into the millions of dollars lost very quickly.
That’s why we’re hearing more about the effectiveness of continuous networking monitoring (as a proven front office cybersecurity measure) coupled with passive discovery and detection capabilities. The use of passive monitoring techniques ensures that the industrial network is not overburdened with cybersecurity-related traffic that could negatively impact production communications.
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