Addressing personnel challenges in securing industrial control systems: Strategies and solutions

The era of digital transformation or Industry 4.0 has come with substantial benefits for industrial areas, including critical and vital infrastructures. These benefits include remote monitoring, increased production, reduced downtime, and reduced errors and waste. Along with these benefits come challenges, such as integrating information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) due to digital transformation, which has increased cyber incidents such as physical attacks on infrastructure, Denial-of-Service, and ransomware attacks in the OT network. IT manages the information, while OT controls the physical environment in business operations. The OT network consists of industrial control systems that must be protected from these cyber-attacks. Cyber security in the OT network is a relatively new subject compared to IT security, and the critical priority for OT is production; this has led to challenges in securing industrial control systems. This paper addresses personnel challenges in securing industrial control systems; these challenges include identifying the best approach to meeting cyber security compliance for industrial control systems, departmental silos between IT and OT departments, and skills. The study investigates how frameworks and standards such as NIST and IEC 62443 can deal with the personnel challenges of securing industrial control systems. A survey conducted reveals that the main challenge for personnel working with industrial control systems is a lack of knowledge and support in meeting cyber security compliance, departmental silos between IT and OT departments, and a lack of skills in OT cyber security. The study introduces the IEC 62443, NICE Framework, and NIST CSF standards and frameworks to reduce these challenges.