Minebea Intec, a leading global manufacturer of weighing and inspection technologies, has outlined the growing cybersecurity risks facing industrial production environments and the steps the company is taking to address them through its latest product architecture.

The company notes that cyberattacks have moved well beyond traditional IT infrastructure, with networked production facilities increasingly becoming targets. Nils Hubrich, product manager at Minebea Intec, points to the erosion of the traditional “air gap” between office IT and manufacturing as a key driver of this shift, explaining that modern Industry 4.0 architectures now rely on continuous data flows from the sensor level through to corporate IT systems.

Hubrich emphasises that cybersecurity in operational technology (OT) environments must be approached differently from conventional IT security, with availability and integrity taking precedence over confidentiality. The company aligns its approach with the IEC 62443 standard series, the central international framework for industrial network and system security, as well as emerging regulatory requirements such as the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act.

Minebea Intec positions its MiNexx® weight indicators as a practical example of security embedded at the architectural level from the outset. The devices incorporate role-based access control, the principle of least privilege, and OPC UA communication with certificate-based authentication and encrypted data exchange.

Hubrich concludes that cybersecurity in industrial settings is not a one-time achievement but an ongoing responsibility — one that begins at the product development stage and extends across the full lifecycle of every connected component.

For more information visit www.minebea-intec.com