Exploiting the Benefits of IT Convergence in Buildings
This article highlights the current technical advances in standardising communications between previously proprietary equipment. The benefits of this this technical convergence should not be ignored, but such developments have to be approached with your eyes wide open. There are current trends within the ‘hacking’ community to use these systems as back doors to a client’s data or to even instigate a DOPS (Denial of Physical Service) attack to disrupt operations. Even the more advanced control systems that now operate as little more then embedded PCs using a file based operating system can fall foul of a ransom-ware attack. It is for this very reason we started Cube2 (www.cube2.uk.com) and developed technologies to protect against this.
