Cybersecurity Issues in Motion Control – An Overview of Challenges

The fourth industrial revolution known as Industry 4.0 brings digitalization of manufacturing processes to a new level through ubiquitous interconnection and real-time information flow between information technologies (IT) and operational technologies (OT) as parts of Industrial Control Systems (ICS). This information flow is not limited to but expands beyond factory walls enabling manufacturing systems to adapt quickly and efficiently to changing customer demands and diversified products. The adaptation is carried out through physical and/or functional reconfiguration of manufacturing systems where Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) based on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) represents the key technical enabler. These changes result in a transition from centralized to distributed control systems architecture where the whole control task is achieved through intensive cooperation between smart devices (e.g., sensors and actuators) with integrated communication and computation capabilities. However, introducing IIoT in ICS brings about new cybersecurity issues due to increased communication between system elements and connection to the global network, making ICS vulnerable to different cyber-attacks with potentially catastrophic consequences. Recently, the research in ICS cybersecurity has intensified leading to significant results for continuous time and discrete events-controlled systems. However, cybersecurity issues in motion control systems that are frequently employed in different manufacturing resources such as machine tools and industrial robots were not sufficiently explored. This work provides an overview of the cybersecurity related challenges in motion control tasks.