Running a smart production facility can simplify many aspects of your work. At the same time, it can also create some new problems to deal with. Most notably, security will become your top priority for some time.
Don’t worry though – once you’ve got the groundwork covered, it doesn’t take that much to keep things running smoothly, as long as you pay attention to what your security experts are telling you.
But beyond that, you can do a lot by ensuring that all of your employees have a proper attitude towards security practices.
Verify Vendors and Sources
One of the simplest and most effective things you could do is to double check where each new application or device is coming from.
You should work with established vendors with a proven track record, whether it’s for something like a barcode scanner, or your entire fleet of smartphones.
Never trust a company that’s been around for a short while just like you wouldn’t trust a workers compensation attorney – they might have the best intentions, but they may not have the necessary experience to deliver their services smoothly and without causing any problems for you.
Isolate as Much as Possible
A great part of running a smart facility is that everything is connected on a fundamental level. And yet, this can also cause problems – especially if one part of the network gets compromised. You can’t really predict when this might happen, given the difficulty of keeping every single device on your network safe.
But you can still go a long way towards keeping things safe by simply ensuring that all devices and applications are as isolated as possible in cases where that makes sense.
Not everything needs to be on the network. Or if it does, it doesn’t necessarily have to be on the main one. Spend a little time thinking about how you can better isolate the separate parts of your facility’s network, and this will prevent a good number of problems.
Careful with New Trends
Another great aspect of the smart world is that new technologies keep arriving to the market at a very rapid rate. As attractive as they may be though, you should always be careful with the decision to adopt them into your workflow.
Similar to what we mentioned about vendors above, you should pay attention to who you’re working with and what solutions you’re deploying in your facilities. Sometimes, new products can bring about more problems than they solve.
The whole point of adopting these technologies is to simplify your workflow and reduce unnecessary stress. If you don’t pay attention to some important factors about the way they work though, you risk creating even more stress for yourself in the long run.
And preventing that is often as simple as paying attention to some common sense factors, and avoiding any rushed responses to potential security threats. And while it’s good to keep up with current trends, you should also do so cautiously to avoid implementing something that will cause severe headaches later on.
It can often pay to be patient when it comes to newly released solutions.
