A consortium of Industrial Internet vendors has agreed upon a security framework for the fledgling industry that aims to strike a balance between the safety and reliability needs of industrial operations. Key to the framework is an attempt to define the “trustworthiness” of emerging manufacturing networks.

The two-year old Industrial Internet Consortium, whose most prestigious members include AT&T Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., General Electric, Intel Corp. and RSA Security, pinpointed five characteristics that are necessary in order to bullet proof industrial networks, namely: safety, reliability, resilience, security and privacy.

The Industrial Internet is a complex, fast-growing segment that’s often intertwined with essential infrastructure and systems that govern things like energy and water. As such, Industrial Internet security is a critical requirement, but it’s not very well understood.

“IIoT security cannot be considered in isolation,” the consortium said in a statement announcing the framework. “It comprises a complex set of industrial processes and applications as well as significant safety and reliability requirements.”

The framework also defines the known risks and threats to Industrial Internet networks, as well as performance indicators and other metrics to be considered. To better highlight the measures that need to be taken, the security considerations for the Industrial Internet are broken down into functional areas such as communications, configuration management, endpoint security and monitoring, while best practices for each area target component and systems manufacturers, as well as end users.

“Many industrial systems simply do not have adequate security in place,” Richard Soley, executive director of the industry consortium, said in a statement. “The level of security found in the consumer Internet just won’t do for the industrial Internet. In order to add security to an industrial system, you must make sure it won’t interfere with safety and reliability requirements.”

As industries race to connect equipment and facilities to the web, the consortium warns that security issues are growing in importance. As such, the framework will be ironed out in a test bed program, the group said.

The consortium said in its statement that one of the key technical issues is developing standards for reliable and high-throughput networks that are capable of handling latency-sensitive applications in a secure fashion. To achieve this, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently announced new networking standards capable of ensuring interoperability and performance to meet the needs to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

The new standards include a new Ethernet 802 standard designed for “time sensitive networking” (TSN). The idea here is to create open networking infrastructure that’s able to support interoperability for Industrial Internet applications such as the synchronization and real-time control of automated manufacturing.

The partners said that one of the main goals of a TSN test bed it launched earlier this year is to develop secure links between the factory floor and so-called “smart edge devices.”

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