Safety and Security Beyond Industry 4.0

As open standards like OPC UA were introduced to facilitate the interoperability of devices, safety and security standards were only gradually incorporated into Industry 4.0 designs. Hence, safety and security issues have eventually emerged with the growing complexity of such systems, and they need to expand outside of their premises to be integrated into larger set-ups. Typical examples thereof are power grids, whose dependability was guarded for long times by strict rules and restrictive communication protocols. Once they were exposed on the Internet, however, their vulnerability has increased to a point where their safety could be compromised. Hence, there is an urgent need to implement effective safety and security mechanisms into OPC UA to provide systems with appropriate levels of functional safety as well as data security. With increasing levels of integration, e.g. with Industry 5.0, these standards need to evolve to provide for sustainability in a globally interconnected world.