Nothing is the same any more, and there’s no going back. We are living through a transformation of advanced manufacturing procedures towards smart industrial processes to suit the new digital environments and connected platforms. The new Industry 4.0 technology will be crucial in changing the production model to the energy-saving system now demanded by worldwide environmental concern. In Spain much remains to be done in terms of changing from a high-consumption, resource-intensive model to another low-energy production of society’s goods and services. The market nowadays is demanding not only machinery or components but also groundbreaking, more flexible and precise and resource-efficient solutions by tapping into the circular economy and digitalization for providing new advanced and customized services.

In short, a scenario with a growing number of automated and exterior-connected facilities calls for a complete security rethink. Cybersecurity has therefore been brought into the forefront of companies’ agendas, for the purpose of protecting technological production processes and the systems that have come to be called cyber-physical. It is now essential to work with an expert partner to identify and display all the companies’ convergent environments and help them to define the best cybersecurity architecture to confront all these risks.

In this special issue of IT Digital Media Group, José Valiente, Communication and Coordination Manager of the Centro de Ciberseguridad Industrial (CCI), together with Javier Zubieta, Marketing and Communications Manager of GMV’s Secure e-Solutions sector, analyze industrial cybersecurity risks and give advice on how to brace an industrial organization against any high-impact cybersecurity incident.