Smartwater: meeting the challenges of cybersecurity

Cybersecurity: a key issue for Spain and the LACROIX Group

Several areas requiring monitoring as well as promising leads were highlighted by the experts and partners of the event. These included:

• José Valiente, Director of the CCI (Industrial Cybersecurity Center), who highlighted the lack of knowledge about facilities, as well as the lack of training and qualifications of infrastructure staff. He argued that an expert in cybersecurity and incident management procedures is now an undeniable necessity.
• Santiago Gonzalez, a cybersecurity analyst at the CNPIC (National Centre for Protection and Critical Infrastructure), who advocated a different approach: “In order to correct potential cybersecurity incidents, operators need to work on cyber-resilience to acquire self-learning and self-correction methods for the fundamental principles: anticipate, resist, recover and evolve.”
• The presentation of the missions and work of INCIBE (an organisation dependent on the Spanish Secretary of State for digitalisation and artificial intelligence devoted to developing national and international cybersecurity), which illustrated the Spanish government’s ambition when it comes to cybersecurity and its willingness to bring all stakeholders together.
• A more corporate perspective on the subject provided by Patrick Fabre, Director of the LACROIX Group in Spain, who explained how cybersecurity is essential for a company like the LACROIX Group: “As a manufacturer of technological solutions and equipment, we operate in a multitude of sectors that are currently immersed in digitalisation processes that require communicating data transmitted in an ultra-secure manner: Smart City, Smart Mobility, Smart Grids, Smart Water, Smart Energy, and so on.” To underpin this message, Ronald Vrancken, Executive Managing Director of LACROIX Environment, stated that “Cybersecurity is at the heart of industrial automation. This is why we have been adapting our solutions to meet these challenges in the past few years.”

Cybersecurity and water cycle management

• For José Valiente, “cybersecurity is an important issue in all sectors, including water, where much remains to be done. It is a key consideration in all new industrial automation projects.”
• Finally, according to Maria del Prado Torrecilla, Head of Customer Technical Service and Product Manager at LACROIX Spain: “Full water cycle facilities are critical infrastructures and, for that reason, they must be monitored constantly, because their safety is fundamental. This is why remote management is essential to the effective control of water facilities.”