According to ARC Advisory Group Inc., in Dedham, Mass., the conflict between the plant and the information technology (IT) group stems from a long list of conflicting missions, systems and priorities.
Here’s ARC’s breakdown of the differences between plant and IT when it comes to technology.
Priorities Office: Confidentiality, data integrity and availability. Plant: Availability, data integrity and confidentiality.
Downtime Office: System downtime can come when the office workers are gone at night. Plant: Often plants run continuously, so downtime translates into lost productivity.
Lifecycle Office: Lifecycle of technology is typically three years. Plant: Lifecycle is usually 10 to 20 years.
Systems Office: Many nearly identical systems—off-the-shelf personal computers and servers, plus standard network components. Plant: Unique systems, as well as rugged industrial personal computers (PCs) that use Microsoft operating systems that are exposed to Windows threats.
Customization Office: Never customize the operating system. Plant: Use operating systems with extensions and unique drivers, which makes updates complex.
Upgrades Office: Maintain systems in mass. Plant: Have not been kept current—may be running Microsoft MS-DOS or Windows 3.1, 95 and/or NT, so security fixes may not be feasible.
Applications Office: Run common office applications. Plant: Run a large variety of applications that are closely coupled with the operating systems and expensive to upgrade.
Outside the box Office: Applications seldom need to stretch the rules. Plant: Applications tend to rely on scripting, proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs) and behaviors to achieve performance, determinism and operations functionalities.
Security approach Office: Use standard operating systems security almost exclusively. Plant: Applications provide security extensions for production needs.
