How have manufacturers’ perspectives on cloud security changed, and what can they do to mitigate cloud risk? This episode digs into the cloud security issue for product innovation and engineering software. Tech-Clarity’s Jim Brown and Siemens’ Digital Industries Software EVP Global Sales & Customer Sucess Bob Jones discuss the evolving view of security for cloud adoption.
Learn more from our guest blog series on the value of the cloud for product innovation and engineering or get more information about Siemens Cloud Solutions from Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Transcript:
Jim Brown:
Security is a critical consideration for any company looking to adopt product innovation and engineering software on the cloud. How has the view of security evolved over the last several years? I came to Siemens to get some clarity.
Hi, this is Jim Brown, president of Tech-Clarity where we make the business value of technology clear. Today we’re here to talk about an important topic. We’re talking about security for product innovation and engineering software on the cloud. I’m here at Siemens and I’m very fortunate to be joined by Executive Vice President, Bob Jones. Thank you for joining me. Let’s jump into this. When we look at our research, one of the things that we see very clearly is that security is a legitimate concern for companies that are moving to the cloud for product and engineering and innovation software. Industrial companies of all kinds have IP that they want to protect. But we have seen a shift in that conversation. And one of the things actually that I find really interesting is that we asked companies, not just what their opinions are about security, but we also asked them about their knowledge and understanding of standards for cloud adoption and for cloud infrastructure, and audit procedures, and those things that companies can use to really mitigate that risk and to try and develop a higher levels of security.
What we found is actually those companies that have higher levels of maturity in their understanding of audits and standards actually view security as a much less critical risk. It doesn’t mean it’s not important, but it just becomes something that they’ve learned to address and adopt over time. I’m curious about a couple of angles from you. First of all, what are you hearing about security from your customer base and then secondarily, what are you doing to address that?
Bob Jones:
Well, that’s a great question. In fact, I would tell you that that question I find the most interesting in this evolution to the cloud, because if you’d asked me that question three years ago, I would’ve told you that we have customers asking that question often, but the dialogue we were having, I would say it was more emotional. It was less fact-based because the customers ultimately were not comfortable that they could turn over their intellectual property to a third-party cloud provider, or that they could depend on that third party to deliver the reliability that they need for that technology to run so that they can get their job done. Fast forward to today, we’re still having that dialogue, but the questions are fact-based. It’s much less emotional because I think our customers have realized that they can’t compete in terms of their ability to invest and spend on security.
They can’t compete with the third-party cloud providers because they’re able to aggregate that spend and invest much more in the technology to deliver the security, but also the research to stay ahead of the trends that are occurring from a security stand point. Having said that, I would tell you that security is of paramount importance to every one of our customers that I talk to, and it’s of paramount importance to Siemens. If you think about Siemens, not just digital industry software, but the broader Siemens, we have a significant investment across all of our technology to manage security from our automation equipment in our factories, to our IoT technology, to our application software. Because we have that broad experience and understanding of security and investment, that also helps us work with our customers better so they can understand how they can leverage our knowledge as well as the third-party cloud providers so that they can deliver a very secure, reliable environment to their customer.
Jim Brown:
I really enjoy talking to you about this and it’s an exciting time in our industry. Thank you, Bob, and thank you for watching. I really appreciate your attendance and if you’d like to learn more, you can certainly watch the rest of this video series. We also have a series of guest blog posts on the Siemens site, and as well as our research and Siemens is a wealth of knowledge as well. Thank you, and Bob, thank you.
Bob Jones:
Thank you, Jim.