Most manufacturing companies don't know how to use AI safely. Industrial Ethernet has exposed plant-floor devices like sensors and PLCs to ransomware, while IT and OT teams rarely talk to each other. The speaker proposes classroom equipment and curricula to teach both AI applications and the cybersecurity needed to protect them.
The small and medium-sized enterprises are less versed on how am I gonna apply artificial intelligence into my manufacturing operation? Oh, I have this thing called industrial Ethernet on the plant floor that for the last 10 years everyone's been hooking up Ethernet cables to. And oh, we have now just created a new attack surface for hackers and for people that are trying to get ransomware into the company. And we gotta figure out how to protect that system on the plant floor because the IT people normally are like, All you OT operational people, just do whatever you want, just don't bother us and don't connect to our, our mainframe, and we'll just ignore what happens. So there's a great opportunity in the classroom for students to learn, how do I apply artificial intelligence in a manufacturing operation? And we have equipment and curriculum built around that. How can I protect my plant floor sensors and programmable logic controllers or PLCs from hackers getting in, we have equipment and curriculum built around that.
