How to Protect Your Manufacturing Plants With Layered Security Systems

Layered Security Systems for Manufacturing Plants

Manufacturing plants are a hotbed of valuable machinery, parts, and finished goods, often located in less-mainstream, out-of-town areas making them prime targets for crime. Burglaries, vandalism, fire, and electrical hazards can place the physical and information (cyber) assets of the plant at considerable risk besides endangering health and safety norms.

Layered security systems can offer manufacturing plant owners enhanced protection and set minds at ease. In this article, we cover what layered security systems are, the different types, and how they provide unmatched security for manufacturing/industrial plant owners. We also cover key security standards all manufacturers need to be aware of.

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What Is a Layered Security System?

A layered security system means protecting your business assets using multiple layers of security, with each layer providing an additional layer of protection.

Layered security systems are a recommended security feature for physical facilities with a high amount of risk, such as manufacturing plants. Each layer makes it more difficult for trespassers and burglars to infiltrate the plant. Having multiple checkpoints for security improves your ability to lower the risk of a breach.

You will get instantaneous alerts when a threat is in progress. You’ll also gain the ability to deal with them promptly before any potential damage gets inflicted on your assets.

Common Threats to Manufacturing Plants

Manufacturing plants are susceptible to a large number of threats both internally and externally. Chief among these are:

Cyberattacks and intellectual property (IP) thefts
The rising cost of materials, which makes the goods housed in manufacturing plants at particular risk for supply chain theft and resale
Equipment failures, environmental accidents, and property damage
Employee injuries and workplace violence
Motor vehicle accidents
Staff sabotage or vandalism

Manufacturing plants Security Systems

Best Layered Industrial Security Measures for Manufacturing Plants

Manufacturing plants have a wide array of layered security systems to choose from. We cover two of the most beneficial of these:

Remote Video Surveillance

Remote video surveillance can help you monitor the most important areas of your plant in real time such as your perimeters, entryways, docks, and manufacturing floors. With advanced analytics, you can track the same or other objects of similar appearance across the entire location, create thermal images at night, and much more.

Perimeter Security Using Access Control

Tiered access controls help you ensure that all your staff is present only where they’re supposed to be. They can also help you identify where all your employees and visitors are in case of an emergency. From a cost perspective, they help reduce the costs of physically re-keying doors every time an employee joins the company or leaves.

Access control systems usually include the following elements:

Credentials to enable access for authorized team members in the form of biometrics, PINs, passwords, etc., unique to them.
Readers to capture, analyze and accept the credentials. The most common readers are keypads, biometric sensors, and mag stripes, to name just a few.
Servers to store credentials and information such as time logs, authorizations, mismatches, and denials.
Control panels that manage access by providing or denying entry. They can also raise alarms or send alerts during attempts at an unauthorized entry. With the remote unlock feature, you can enable access through a phone or even a web browser.

Recognized by the Security Industry.

Security Standards for Manufacturing Facilities

Both manufacturers and distributors have to be aware of specific security standards provided by governing bodies to ensure compliance.

ISO/IEC 27001

The ISO/IEC 27001 is a widely known global standard for information security management systems (ISMS) and also covers best practices for manufacturers to protect their data and build cyber resilience. Cyber resilience is the ability to prevent, resist, and recover from cyber-attacks with minimal to no impact on delivering business outcomes.

The ISO/IEC standard strengthens and solidifies the ability of all types of businesses, not just manufacturing, to manage their most valuable information assets, such as sensitive financial information, intellectual property, IT physical assets and equipment, employee data, and third-party information.

NFPA 731 Standard for the Installation of Premises Security Systems

The NFPA 731 Standard shares the requirements for the “application, location, installation, performance, testing, and maintenance of electronic premises security systems and their components.” The NFPA, or the National Fire Protection Association, is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the cause of eliminating injury, the loss of life, as well as property and economic loss due to fire, electrical, and related hazards.

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Risk Assessment Standard (RA.1-2015)

The primary focus of this standard is risk assessment. The standard provides guiding principles for developing and managing an effective risk assessment program and confirming the capabilities of risk assessors. It also included seven annexes for the purpose of applying risk assessment together with how these can potentially be addressed.

Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation (OCTAVE)

OCTAVE defines and provides guidelines for managing information security risks. Core to the standard is identifying important information assets, identifying threats to the assets, and determining the vulnerabilities that potentially expose the assets to the threats. Studying this information in depth can help businesses implement the ideal protection strategy to protect their valuable information assets.

The Open Group Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR)

The Open FAIRTM framework empowers risk analysts to carry out effective security risk analysis. Analysts can use this framework to better manage the scope of the loss that can come about from threats. They can also make use of the taxonomy provided in this standard to identify the factors that drive the risks and how they influence each other — key to understanding the interdependencies involved in risk management.

Making sense of all these standards can be overwhelming to most business owners. Hence, the recommendation is to partner with experienced and knowledgeable security firms like Alarm Detection Systems (ADS), which can help you navigate the complexities and ensure compliance.