EIC Speaker Spotlight: Graham Williamson

If there was one word to use to characterize the current state of the it sector, it would be exciting. The current situation we have is over the last few years, there's been a significant decrease in the cost of equipment infrastructure. And there's been a significant increase in the functionality of that infrastructure.

So we're at a juncture where things that weren't viable just a few years ago now are, and I would encourage any organization to think through how they can make use of automated processes, monitoring of things that were too expensive to monitor before and see how they could improve their customer service through the use of IOT. Because if they're not, is likely their competitors are so focus on what can you do, analyze the cost of doing that and then run an experiment and see if it's going to generate the facilities that you'd like to.

I mean, if we just think back a few years, we can now in the packaging industry, track a package from here in Australia through to Munich in Germany, and we can do that real time. We can, we it's, it's a phenomenal capability. We now have. If we think in the industry 4.0 area, we can now assist in a manufacturing process far better than the we, we, we ever have been able to do before. Can I tell you a little story? Penfolds wine is a Penfold producer here in Australia, ships to China. One of the problems they do have is counterfeiting of their wine.

So what, one of the features now, the factors that they use in determining whether a wine is counterfeit is the level of filling in a bottle through their IOT systems. They fill a bottle to 750 mill to the micro millimeter. So obviously in comparison with the counter hitter, that's a significant benefit. So think through the things that you can do with, I T give it a shot. And I think we'll find that the, the viability of an IOT supported process is pretty significant these days. I think there's several factors that lead to this level of satisfaction that you achieve from ant installation.

I will. One of the, one of the features of that we have, that we have with the it industry is, is quite fragmented, which means that you have to have a good understanding of the capability of a vendor or an a consulting organization that you might engage to help with your actual deployment.

And, and I'll be the first one to agree that that's not easy. Now, many of the, the vendors, the customers that were actually part of that survey had, had actually done an experimental deployment. So they had this idea and they wanted to try it and see how it worked.

And the, in doing that, they didn't really know what their expectations were. And if you don't know what your expectations are, it's pretty hard to meet them. So I would suggest that as you enter into the it space, if it's the first time installation for you, but you think through what it is you want to achieve, you document what you want to achieve. You communicate to others in your organization, what you want to achieve, and then that'll help make sure that that implementation will actually do what you're trying to achieve for that particular installation.

As with many projects, good project management is very important for an IOT deployment in project management comes in two parts first, there's the planning phase. And then there's the execution phase. In the planning phase, you must determine what the requirements are for the project. What are the deliverables for the project? You must engage the correct stakeholders for that. So the more communication you do within your organization to tell people what you're trying to achieve, the more people will come interested in what you're doing, assist with what you're doing.

And the net result then will have a, a, a wider base to, to determine if it's satisfactory for what they want. The execution phase is important to have a steering committee.

So again, you're engaging people within the organization is not just one little group in the group, in the organization. That's going ahead and doing this. You're engaging with a wider base in, in your organization. And the steering committee is responsible for reviewing progress. You need to make sure that you do set the, the progress for what, what sort of schedule you're going, going to be on, what are the milestones you want to achieve? What is the budget for that particular project? And once that's approved, you need to manage to that.

So the ex execution phase requires the review process to happen. It requires the steering committee to be active in removing roadblocks to the project. And with that wider base, that's looking at focusing on helping with the project deployment, we'll find our, the satisfaction going up. The number of successful projects that we're going to achieve will will increase. I made a projection a couple of years ago that we were going to experience a catastrophic event in the IOT space.

Now we have had some we've ha have had some interesting events happen, nothing I would classify as catastrophic yet. So I would still hold to that. If there's one area that we need to apply all the knowledge and the tools that we have, it's in IOT. So at the device level, we need to make sure how are we managing those?

Who can, who has access to them? What sort of process do we go through when we update them at the controller level, we need to know who's got access to those. What's the access control list within those devices at the scaler level, if we've got a scaler system, that's a computer that we need to protect just as we protect other computers within our organization. So we need to include that in our cybersecurity strategy and, and tied into the tools that we have.

You know, if we've got a security operations center, it should be monitoring our IOT systems as well. Then there's the, the output of IOT systems. I systems generate a lot of data in many cases, that data is not properly looked after. And there's people that would be read competitors, who would be very interested in that data. And so we need to not use the normal processes we have of protecting our data, make sure the database has the security controls on it. We want make sure we aggregate data and then delete the, the that's a, a chronic problem in it.

Systems is the volume of data we need to aggregate it and then delete the, what we don't need. We need to make sure that we anonymize data. If it's going to be put into a place where other people can get ahold of it. So we need to think through all of those things that in the information technology center side, we're pretty good at and apply them to the operational technology side when it comes to IOT data. If we look at the, some of the problems we've had in the cybersecurity field.

So there was an account takeover problem in a water filtration plant in, in Florida earlier this year, that could well have been avoided by ex making sure that thet system had the same security level supply to it as we do in the information technology side, so that the, there should be no remote management software on ant system. And please make sure you don't have any mailer anywhere close to any IOT system. And then there was the problem that we had with software being injected, malware, being injected into software, distributed to thousands of companies.

You know, we need to make sure that we put the protection in place that allows that to be caught. And I think the industry has done an excellent job of making sure they close that loop. So let's apply some of the knowledge that we have from the information technology side, in the operational technology side. Yeah. That it would be a very exciting time deploying, deploying the first IOT deployment solution.

If there was one thing that I would say you must do is manage expectations, make sure that the, the people that are, are monitoring that project and looking at its deliverables are know what the expectations are of, of, for that particular project. I think you need to make sure that that initial deployment isn't too big. Don't try and boil the ocean on your first try.

What you want to do is to have a limited deployment that allows you to gain experience and the experience that the team builds up in its initial deployment obviously is going to then feed through to the, to the rest of the project so that we might then, then go. So, so take segment your, your solution, do one bit of a time and make sure that you communicate and celebrate the success that you have as you proceed. Okay.

So, so communication is a very important part of that initial IOT deployment to make sure that people are aware what it is you're trying to achieve. And then use that when they say, okay, we've achieved it.