An average human being today spends about 90% of their time in buildings. The world we live in demands buildings to do a lot more than just provide space to live and work. Some of the key challenges faced by building operations are:

• Reducing Energy and Operating Costs
• Meeting tighter regulatory requirements
• Reducing Space Overcapacity and maximising efficiency
• Meeting decarbonization and sustainability goals

Recent years have seen enormous digitalization trends in building technologies, including the way we live, work, interact, and use buildings. This has driven massive growth in technologies used to manage and gather data from buildings.

Digitalisation of building technologies comes with cybersecurity risks. Until recently, building systems were separated and proprietary, but are now connected and built on more open IT standards and protocols.

Cybersecurity challenges in building systems include:

• Ambiguous system ownership leading to cybersecurity to “fall between the cracks”
• The convergence of IT and OT systems
• Adoption of cloud, AI, and ML
• Use of legacy system components
• Most building protocols (BACnet, KNX, Modbus, etc.) lack built-in security features

What needs to be done?

• Education & Awareness
• Security-by-design thinking
• Adoption of OT Security best practices (ISO 27001/IEC 62443)
• Supplier and Third-party Cybersecurity