Today we are announcing Aron Semle, CTO at HighByte, as a keynote speaker for S4x26. He is the best I’ve seen in explaining how and why disparate systems at all levels of the Purdue Model will be connecting. Aron won’t be on the Main Stage to focus on security, although it will come up. He will be on stage to help the S4 community understand what is coming in the way of new connections to support an explosion in Industrial DataOps. What we will need to secure in the next 1 to 3 years.
The why is important. We shouldn’t connect systems and increase cybersecurity risk unless there are worthwhile benefits. Aron will show the benefits that will drive asset owners to demand these connections, and the basic architecture, protocols and components that will be deployed to achieve these benefits.
This keynote is an important part of the S4x26 theme word: Connect. I’ve been attending virtual and physical events to better understand what is coming and being accelerated by AI. The Connect, Analyze, and Visualize steps in enabling digital transformation are so much faster and easier with AI, particularly the getting the data, adding context to the data, and the interface to ask questions and get answers. It’s amazing what the pioneers are accomplishing, and competition is going to push companies to do this or be left behind.
Of course you can try to be the security person who says no. Who stands on the tracks as the train is coming. This doesn’t fit the Create The Future mission of S4. It is more of a Stop The Future mission, and there are events that cater to that.