The manufacturing industry is undergoing a monumental digital shift to Industry 4.0. This shift focuses on automation, digital twins, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), centralization of operations, the use of Advanced Process Control (APC), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), cloud computing, and more. This radical change requires systems, from the factory floor to the internet, to communicate securely.

Manufacturing also faces a supply shortage of human capital and industry knowledge as baby boomers retire and new skilled operators are in short supply and high demand. This knowledge gap is addressed by implementing Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) to standardize processes. While automation is an excellent way to address this challenge, it also creates human knowledge gaps. When manufacturing relies solely on ICS to operate and control operations, a single point of failure can affect production down to the factory floor. Like the other industrial sectors, Availability is essential.

Manufacturing has taken a similar approach to assuring availability by having redundancy on the factory floor, routine maintenance, safety inspections, and backing up their ICS and other systems. While the risks to the communities they operate in may not be as great to Utilities, Oil and Gas, and Chemical companies, the risk to revenue and operations is just as great.

With Fortress, organizations can cost-effectively ensure the availability of critical ICS. The Fortress platform combines the safety of routine backups with the redundancy of high-availability systems into a secure-by-design solution. The Fortress platform allows for immediate resumption of operator visibility and control, even when human error or a cyber threat takes down the entire primary control system. The secondary environment can also be patched on a separate schedule from the primary, enabling operations to continue running even during software maintenance periods. Additionally, Fortress's design ensures that clients only need to build out enough compute to run core industrial systems during crisis events, keeping capital expenditure and O&M costs down to a fraction of the primary system.

Leverage Industry 4.0 by taking full advantage of technology to fill the resource gap, lower your production costs, and use Fortress to ensure that your investment is protected.