{"id":8998,"date":"2026-09-22T15:11:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T20:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/?p=8998"},"modified":"2026-09-22T14:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:35:15","slug":"cybersecurity-fundamentals-for-material-handling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/22\/cybersecurity-fundamentals-for-material-handling\/","title":{"rendered":"Cybersecurity Fundamentals for Material Handling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/061.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"407\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/061.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8948\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/061.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/061-300x136.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/061-768x347.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-4.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"297\" height=\"283\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-4.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9050\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.049530646051905;width:245px;height:auto\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">BY CHRISTIAN DOW, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP, MHI<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>AS SUJIT MOITRA<\/strong>, vice president of enterprise technology at MHI member Top Hat Engineering, reflects on present\u2011day cybersecurity, he believes the material handling industry must look beyond traditions. In fact, he stresses that cybersecurity\u2014within modern warehouses and material handling environments alike\u2014extends well beyond conventional IT security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After all, cybersecurity systems now directly control physical operations, from conveyors, to order fulfillment, to robotics. Thus, cyber risk is no longer just an &#8220;information security concern.&#8221; Now it\u2019s an &#8220;operational safety and business continuity risk,&#8221; too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;A strong cybersecurity program is therefore designed to protect people, physical operations and customer fulfillment outcomes, not just data,&#8221; Moitra stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With this in mind, he says that a mature cybersecurity strategy should focus on six core objectives today: operational continuity, asset visibility, access control, segmentation, threat detection and resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When it comes to operational continuity, Moitra advises warehouses to have incident response plans. Above all else, these plans should include manual fallback operations, such as continued picking and shipping. Ransomware and system outage scenarios, robotics and warehouse automation failures, and vendor compromise scenarios should be considered as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;These plans will ensure warehouses remain functional even during cyber incidents,&#8221; he emphasized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asset visibility and control must be a cybersecurity fundamental for material handling facilities, too. A complete inventory of all IT and operational technology (OT) systems\u2014including cloud services, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), robotics, scanners and WMS\u2014has to be maintained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Without this, securing the environment is not possible,&#8221; Moitra added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With regard to access control, it\u2019s important to remember that third\u2011party vendors can be a primary risk vector. Consequently, all access should be approved, logged, monitored and time\u2011bound. It should also be restricted, via multi\u2011factor authentication and virtual private networks, and segregated, according to each vendor\u2019s specific role and purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Identity controls will reduce any likelihood of unauthorized access as well, from multi\u2011factor authentication, to role\u2011based access control, to privileged access management, which is provided specifically to engineers and vendors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;This will ensure only authorized users, systems and vendors can interact with operations,&#8221; Moitra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Network segmentation is also crucial, particularly IT versus OT separation. In Moitra\u2019s opinion, warehouse environments should be segmented into &#8220;controlled zones.&#8221; For instance, they can be segmented into enterprise IT systems like enterprise resource planning, human resources and emails. In addition, they may be segmented into OT systems, such as conveyors, PLCs and robotics, vendor access zones and warehouse applications (WCS, WES and WMS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;That will prevent cyber threats from spreading into physical operations,&#8221; Moitra explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As far as threat detection is concerned, Moitra stresses that warehouses must identify\u2014and then respond to\u2014any potential cybersecurity threats as quickly as possible. Such speed is important not only across their IT layers, but their OT layers, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To do so quickly, consistently and successfully, Moitra recommends warehouses to utilize authentication and access logs. API and system activity monitoring should also constantly occur, along with anomaly detection for operational behaviors. Centralized Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) visibility is vital as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Again, security monitoring must span IT and OT environments,&#8221; Moitra added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, another key cybersecurity fundamental, resilience, must not be overlooked either. According to Moitra, backups will enable rapid recoveries whenever cybersecurity threats become actual attacks. The faster a warehouse\u2019s recovery capabilities are, the better off they\u2019ll be during and after a cyberattack, both short and long term.<a href=\"https:\/\/openlightbox\/\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">OT configurations and WMS should be regularly backed up. Offline and immutable backups are also significant, while warehouses should consider having tested recovery procedures, too. Of equal importance, defined recovery objectives like recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) are very helpful. Simply put, the more prepared warehouses are, the more resilient they\u2019ll be, regardless of which cyberattacks they may encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While reflecting on cybersecurity fundamentals, Corey Hlavacek, senior director of information security at MHI member enVista, believes multi\u2011factor authentication (MFA) remains critical, just as it was in the past. However, in order to prevent most cyberattacks these days, it\u2019s typically not enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutions-digital.com\/mhiq\/library\/item\/0426_volume_14__issue_4\/4362029\/\"><em>Click here to read the full article.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\">VECTORFUSIONART\/<a href=\"http:\/\/shutterstock.com\/\">SHUTTERSTOCK.COM<\/a><\/h6>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY CHRISTIAN DOW, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP, MHI AS SUJIT MOITRA, vice president of enterprise technology at MHI member Top Hat Engineering, reflects on present\u2011day cybersecurity, he believes the material handling industry must look beyond traditions. In fact, he stresses that cybersecurity\u2014within modern warehouses and material handling environments alike\u2014extends well beyond conventional IT &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":8948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[1539,442,1902,1907,466,4136],"class_list":["post-8998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-departments","category-technology","tag-cybersecurity","tag-mhi-solutions","tag-mhi-solutions-magazine","tag-mhisolutionsmag","tag-supply-chain","tag-top-hat-engineering"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cybersecurity Fundamentals for Material Handling - MHI Solutions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mhisolutionsmag.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/22\/cybersecurity-fundamentals-for-material-handling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cybersecurity Fundamentals for Material Handling - MHI Solutions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BY CHRISTIAN DOW, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP, MHI AS SUJIT MOITRA, vice president of enterprise technology at MHI member Top Hat Engineering, reflects on present\u2011day cybersecurity, he believes the material handling industry must look beyond traditions. 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