June 2020

ROADMAPS TO RECOVERY What is the difference between safety and cybersecurity? One of the best definitions (though not an entirely rigorous one!) is that safety protects people from the machine, while cybersecurity protects the machine from the people – the main source of computer viruses. The two disciplines are alike in important ways. Just as carelessness or unforeseen circumstances can foil well- devised safety practices, a concerted effort undertaken by a skilled attacker will eventually get past even the best cyber- defences. But using safety as a model for cybersecurity in industrial automation has not yet been widely implemented. Now, we have also to protect the people from ourselves, or specifically the biological viruses that some of us may be carrying. One victim of Covid likened his experience to a cyber-attack. Like biological viruses, computer viruses cannot reproduce on their own, but instead rely upon a host to fuel their spread. What, if anything, could we learn from this analogy? Computer viruses were first created in the 1940s by researchers who were interested in programs that could replicate themselves. But despite biological viruses having a head-start of about four billion years (!), we have a better understanding of the cyber-virus, and its biological counterpart remains more of a mystery. While 439,000 new malware variants were detected in 2019, there are 1.6 million biological viruses in animals just waiting to strike... Can we reverse-engineer the cybersecurity approach and come up with ways of combatting pandemics? Simplistically, a firewall is a cyber breathing mask, and anti-virus pattern- matching resembles the antibodies in the immune system. More complex biological analogies to cybersecurity features, such as code sanitisation and code packers, indeed form the basis of some of the approaches to the development of cures and vaccines. But there is even more to learn from the strategies used to protect against cyber-terrorism, such as: zero trust policies; detection versus prevention;“assume a breach"; segmentation; risk modelling; intelligence sharing; and conducting regular drills. Even a superficial understanding of these concepts exposes the lack of preparedness that most Governments throughout the world have shown in setting up their defences. Ultimately, we hope as individuals and manufacturers to return as soon as possible to something resembling our previous lives. Some of the changes made may well turn out to be permanent – some arguably for the better. Will we revert to physical meetings, now that we got used to virtual meetings andWebinars? Now that it is impossible to use tightly packed human beings on production lines, will we invest more in automation and robotics? Andy Pye , Consulting Editor n COMMENT n NEWS June 2020 www.drivesncontrols.com 12 THE GLOBALMOTION controls market will drop by 7.5% this year, before starting to recover in 2021 and slowing down again in 2023, according to the latest predictions from Interact Analysis. The smaller CNC (computer numerical controls) market will be particularly badly hit, with a 24.7% decline this year, partly because of its exposure to two major sectors – aerospace and automotive – that have been almost completely shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic. The GMC (general motion controls) market for servodrives and servomotors will experience a much smaller impact, partly because of its wide application range and the fact that demand for machinery from the food and beverage industry has held up because “demand for food rarely falls, even in times of global shock”. Interact expects GMC sales to the food sector to dip by just 0.85% this year. Although the pandemic may cause supply-side issues, the analysts expects these to be short-lived. Turning to three other key GMC markets: n Packaging machinery This is strongly linked to the food and beverage industry, and Interact expects it to follow a similar trajectory and to ride the storm. Most regions will either flatline on 2019 figures, or dip only slightly. n Materials-handling equipment Interact predicts a strong uptake for logistics and warehouse automation applications. Sales will dip in 2020, but recover by the end of 2021. n Semiconductor and electronics machinery This sector historically experiences boom and bust cycles, with machinery that is expensive, ordered well in advance, and becomes outdated quickly. Interact expects the sector to expand by 1.7% in 2020, followed by significant growth over the coming five years. The CNC market is highly dependent on the machine-tools industry, which has been hit badly by the Covid-19 crisis. Interact predicts that the global machine tool industry will plummet by almost 30% during 2020, adding that few of the major machine-tool-producing regions will come close to 2019 levels in the next five years. The Japanese, German and Italian CNC markets are expected to see the biggest contractions during 2020. The machine tools sector also faces longer-term challenges, such as the growth of the electric vehicle industry, which needs much less tooling, and the expansion of additive manufacturing, which competes with machine tools. “It is therefore clear that the industry is at a potential turning point in its future evolution,” says Interact’s research director, Tim Dawson. www.interactanalysis.com Motion controls market will fall by 7.5% in 2020, before rebounding in 2021 Growth forecasts for the global market for general motion controls, before and after Covid-19. Source: Interact Analysis