Michelle Michael made a name for herself in the IEC world long ago as an expert in security for industrial systems. For example, she has already received the IEC Young Professional award and, as convenor, has since been leading her own working group within the IECEE (International Electrotechnical Commission for Electrical Equipment), which is dedicated to the topic of cyber security.
Until recently, the TÜVIT expert was also the project manager of an international working group for the development of IEC TS 62443-6-1. IEC 62443 is an international cyber security standard for Industry 4.0, which operators, integrators and manufacturers of industrial automation systems can use to improve the general security of their processes, products or systems. The standard is divided into various parts. One of these is IEC TS 62443-6-1, which was published this year. The Technical Specification, which was developed under the leadership of Michelle Michael, provides an assessment methodology for determining the degree of fulfillment of the requirements for industrial automation and control systems (IACS) in accordance with IEC 62443-2-4. It contains concrete security tasks and evaluation activities and thus serves as a guideline for conformity assessment bodies, product suppliers, service providers and asset owners – and thus for all roles within IEC 62443. With the help of the Technical Specification, repeatable and reproducible evaluation results can be achieved against the IEC 62443-2-4 requirements.
“The new part IEC TS 62443-6-1 translates the technical requirements from 2-4 into specific tasks and thus creates a transparent framework for evaluation. The logic of the evaluation methodology is based on the sequence of certain evaluation steps and existing dependencies from the main standard,” says Michelle Michael. “We are happy that with the TS we have made a contribution to logically structuring the evaluation according to IEC 62443-2-4 and making it more standardized.”
