Page 43 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2022

P. 43

Avoiding the Risks of Ransomware Strikes in Life Sciences

By Travis Tidwell, Business Development Lead, Rockwell Automation

While Life Sciences companies have become even more important to all of us during the pandemic, they
have always been challenged with unique cybersecurity risk. Operating within a highly validated
environment that typically runs 24x7, these manufacturing systems do not follow a standard lifecycle
timeline and these systems typically cannot implement security updates in a timely manner.

In addition, many pharmaceutical and biomanufacturing companies are under pressure to reduce cost,
adapt to market demands and increase quality across their products. This is leading to an accelerated
adoption of digital technologies, more interconnected systems and highly automated manufacturing
processes to meet business initiatives around agile manufacturing capabilities and stronger data integrity
compliance. However, these digital transformation initiatives are adding more complexity to the security
risk equation by expanding the attack surface for threat actors to target mission-critical systems, many of
which are legacy systems running outdated operating systems.

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