Rockwell Automation, through its newly inaugurated Abu Dhabi office, held an event recently to emphasise on the the importance of security for industrial control applications.
At the event Rockwell Automation EMEA president, Hedwig Maes, focused on transforming these challenges into advantages through smart, safe, sustainable manufacturing and in collaboration with key partner like Cisco.
During the discussion, Cisco Systems Middle East Sales Manager, Osama Rasoul said “Putting up added firewall will not solve the security issues. Part of our engineering includes data protection, defining the process and designing the integrated architecture.”
The challenges from engineering and maintenance point of view are “diagnostics, different softwares to configure, specialized tools to make connections, cable slab for moving equipment and more” said Sohar Aluminum Oman Automation Superintendent, Othman Al Balushi.
Thomas Lenzen, IT manager of Sohar Aluminum, also added that “Industrial network security business challenges encompass protection of people, propriety information (intellectual property) from unintended or malicious action of an individual or group, downtime, lost data, physical incident and loss time to market or loss of public confidence.”
On Rockwell’s business in the Middle East, the president, Maes said “We are expanding across Middle East as we have seen a significant growth of 23% revenue in EMEA market. After North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) is the next high priority.”
Through its Rockwell Automation headquarters in Abu Dhabi, the company caters to not only United Arab Emirates but also its neighbouring countries like Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Libya.
