Cyber resilience in the waste management industry
The waste disposal and recycling industry bears a great deal of responsibility with the aim of climate-friendly energy and waste management and a sustainable supply of raw materials. Many companies are therefore pushing ahead with digitalisation projects, but this increases the risk of falling victim to complex cyber attacks. TÜVIT provides support in the form of IT inspections, security audits and certificates.
From the collection of domestic or industrial waste, its sorting and interim storage through to recycling and disposal, waste management can be relied upon in many places in Europe. This is due to an increasing degree of automation based on modern information and telecommunication technologies. On the one hand, they enable controlled route planning for waste collection, but also the growing convergence of OT and IT infrastructures in the context of digitalised procedures and processes in modern sorting plants, waste treatment plants and waste incineration plants.
Waste management as a critical infrastructure
The digitalisation of waste management is a guarantee for economic and technological efficiency in the collection, recycling, recovery and disposal of waste. On the other hand, there are serious risks posed by attacks from cyberspace. If IT systems are infected with malware, there is a rapid increase in the risk of epidemics and environmental hazards.
Legislators have also recognised the importance of waste management as a public service and a public structural network. In Germany, for example, waste disposal companies, recycling companies and municipal businesses have been categorised as critical infrastructure operators since May 2021. This is defined in the IT Security Act 2.0 and the KRITIS Regulation 2.0. The EU NIS Directive also sets out the framework for cybersecurity in critical infrastructures at European level.
IT security in waste management companies can only be guaranteed if all security levels are robustly protected against internal and external attacks, both individually and as an overall system. TÜVIT not only provides the right security concept for this. We also offer waste and recycling companies a comprehensive portfolio of auditing and testing services based on nationally and internationally recognised standards. We also have our own in-house certification programmes in selected areas.