Professor Hans-Joachim Hof gave a talk on “Escapes from crisis of 4.0 – security for Industrie 4.0” on the 10.11.2016 at MB connect line’s industrial user group. The talk showed means for equipment manufacturers to secure their systems and communications in industrial automation. Update mechanisms got a lot of focus in the talk as it is to be expected, that current trends like the Quantum computer will lead to obsolescence of many current cryptographic algorithms. So especially equipment with a long lifetime should be designed to allow easy change of cryptographic algorithms . . Professor Hof estimates that real usable quantum computers will appear in the next 20 years, which is why plants with a life time of 20 or more years verification should include opportunities for changes.
The user conference program: link