Opening Address by Mr. Victor Lam, JP, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer at the "Cyber Security for Industry 4.0 International Conference"

Mr. (Willy) Lin, distinguished speakers, ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning! I am delighted to be here today at the Cyber Security for Industry 4.0 Conference. Today, digital transformation is revolutionising every industry, from the services industry to the manufacturing industry in our economy. The rise of new digital industrial technology, known as Industry 4.0, makes it possible to connect and analyse data across different machines so as to improve efficiency and productivity.

With the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies like Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and cloud computing, physical machines and manufacturing systems can be integrated horizontally and vertically to work seamlessly and interactively in a cyber-physical environment. This, in turn, enables our industrialists to make quicker responses and achieve better inventory management across digitised global industry supply chain. While making manufacturing processes more intelligent and dynamic, such connectivity also poses threats to the processes if they are not managed properly. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organiser for arranging this event to accentuate the importance of cyber security in Industry 4.0.

In her recent Policy Address, the Chief Executive reaffirmed our commitment to develop Hong Kong into a smart city. It is vital for Hong Kong to embrace innovation and technology to build a strong economy and enhance quality of living.

Industry 4.0 and the Smart City initiative share many common values and attributes. For example, they both focus on the adoption of interconnected digital technologies. In fact, smart manufacturing is one of the initiatives identified in the Consultancy Study of our Smart City Blueprint to promote re-industrialisation for Hong Kong. By incorporating emerging technologies such as robotics, sensor technology, 3D printing, our industrialists can develop products of higher value through innovative transformation of manufacturing processes.  

The road of transformation to Industry 4.0 is not without challenges. Today more and more organisations start to digitise their manufacturing equipment and processes. This makes industry supply chain management more complex every day. Protecting an organisation’s assets and implementing proper risk management across the supply chain have become priorities for the manufacturing industry, especially the production and control units. With rapid adoption of IoT and connected devices, cyber attacks and threats can bring forth far more extensive effects than ever before. No doubt the adoption of emerging and integrated technologies can produce benefits such as process streamlining and cost reduction. However, the more integrated are the various systems and components on the supply chain, the higher is the risk that the whole supply chain and the quality of the end-product will be affected by just one infected or vulnerable system along the chain.  In case software reliability and cyber security are compromised, operation outage will be inevitable, causing significant impact on the production processes. Hence, when developing new business models with new technologies, it is also important for the industrialists to take cyber security into account at various stages during the manufacturing processes, especially at the very beginning of the design stage, which is what we call “security by design”.

In fact, the Government attaches great importance to cyber security. Internally, we strive to protect government IT systems and infrastructure with due intelligence and resilience.  In the wider community, we work closely with relevant stakeholders, information security industry players and organisations to promote cyber security awareness among the general public and local organisations, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

To better equip the industry in tackling cyber threats, we collaborate with the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT), which is an important team under the Hong Kong Productivity Council, to facilitate information dissemination, provide advice on preventive measures against security threats, and promote information security awareness to businesses and the public. You are cordially invited to participate in the activities organised by the HKCERT to better understand the trends and development of cyber security. You may also visit our thematic Cyber Security Information Portal (www.cybersecurity.hk) to learn more about the good practices and expert advice on cyber security. We continuously enrich the contents of this portal to help SMEs and the general public to deploy appropriate preventive measures and responsive solutions in the face of cyber threats and attacks.

In this Industry 4.0 revolution, it is a real challenge to integrate the physical and virtual worlds seamlessly in order to enhance the competitiveness of various industry sectors. Here, I would like to encourage all of you to join hands with security professionals to develop sound and reliable cyber security capability in your business so as to grasp the many opportunities brought about by Industry 4.0. I wish all of you every success, and this conference a fruitful one.

Thank you.

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