Cyber security: the need
for organised innovation
With cyber attacks on the rise, innovation in the area of cyber security is crucial if organisations want to stay ahead
of the game. Junior Isles hears how Siemens Energy is taking an organised approach to managing cyber security
innovation.
elaborating identied trends or ex-
periment on new ideas within the
CYBER LAB – whether from internal
sources, academia, government or-
ganisations or start-ups. So, this is
where our thoughts and activities are
focused on for the next year.”
To manage all the different activi-
ties, Ammerl and Popa needed a
platform which helps them to orches-
trate and visualise the innovation
work. For this, they came up with the
concept of the cyber security ‘Orbit’.
In essence, the Cyber security Orbit is
a platform where the three activity
streams are initiated, executed, moni-
tored and controlled. “Whether it is a
trend, a project with a start-up or a
CYBER LAB project, the Cyber se-
curity Orbit is the digital replica of
what we’re doing,” explained Popa.
Ammerl added: “Through our inter-
nal network we started to realise, that
we’re not the only ones in Siemens
Energy to seek a digital solution in
scanning for trends, orchestrating
projects and to increase transparency.
Therefore, we joined forces with the
Corporate Innovation, the Digitalisa-
tion, and the Finance teams to realise
a bigger-scale Orbit for anybody
within Siemens Energy who is trying
to do the same.
“We all wanted to increase transpar-
ency, grow the big data percentage on
which we base our work on, and we
also wanted to lead innovation cam-
paigns and activities. By teaming up,
we’re operating in what we call the
Orbit Ecosystem – a network of dif-
ferent organisational groups with the
same focus, which is to increase the
transparency and foster the knowl-
T
here is no doubt; cyber attacks
on the power sector are on the
rise. According to a report
published late last year by Dragos,
Inc., two-thirds of the groups targeting
industrial control systems are focused
on the electricity sector. And as the
energy landscape becomes more
distributed and digitalised, along with
a changing workplace environment,
cyber threats will not only continue to
increase, but attacks will also become
more sophisticated.
Yet keeping ahead of the game is no
small undertaking – it calls for con-
stant innovation by energy companies
and power equipment manufacturers.
Siemens Energy certainly sees in-
novation as key. While cyber security
is often simply thought of in terms of
the need to protect an organisation,
Siemens Energy believes that innova-
tion in cyber security is an area that
companies must invest in. It is there-
fore building specic expertise and
systems in this eld through a new
department.
Florian Ammerl is one of the com-
pany’s cyber innovation managers
spearheading the department. Ex-
plaining the need for innovation, he
said: “Innovation and cyber security
are not a well-known couple in the
energy industry. But with both quan-
tity and quality of risks rising as a re-
sult of a more and more digitalised
world, the urgency to combine those
two disciplines is greater than ever.”
Cyber security is often viewed in
terms of risk, and in the energy sector
– perhaps the most critical infrastruc-
ture – the stakes are high. But where
there is risk, there is also opportunity.
Siemens Energy sees cyber security
as an opportunity to actively support
front-end development of its products
to secure itself and its customers.
Patrick Popa, who shares the task
of managing cyber security innova-
tion, said: “We see high growth po-
tential from a market perspective,
which drives our focus when it
comes to strategy. We want to take a
proactive approach by identifying
new market trends and new technolo-
gies. One of our main goals within
our cyber security innovation depart-
ment is to address those questions; to
scan trends and technologies that
might make today’s technologies
obsolete in the future.”
Ammerl and Popa cited blockchain
and articial intelligence (AI) as ex-
amples of two increasingly prevalent
technologies that are impacting al-
most every industry. They explained
how this inuences their business,
i.e., how Siemens Energy conducts
business internally and with custom-
ers and how it reacts.
“This is what we mean by our pro-
active approach. It’s about identifying
these technologies and preparing for
them before they impact the way we
do business,” said Popa. “For exam-
ple, blockchain or machine learning
are technologies that present new
elds of cyber threats on the one hand
but also enable us to be proactive and
to think of new business opportunities
on the other. Through our lens, new
technologies offer risk and opportu-
nity at the same time.”
Taking an organised approach to
cyber security innovation is not
straightforward, though. To structure
the way they are driving innovations,
Popa and Ammerl rstly created three
main activity streams, perfectly tai-
lored to the organisation’s culture:
n Trend Management to scan upcom-
ing trends and convert them into mean-
ingful projects
n Collaborations to further enable
Siemens Energy by leveraging outside
knowledge & solutions
n The CYBER LAB as a place to ex-
ecute product and process innovation.
“Conducting innovation projects
requires investments, therefore we
need to know if it has value or not. As
trends are the rst thing indicating a
market movement or technology
shift, it came natural to us that trends
should be the initiator for anything we
do,” said Ammerl. “This demands
proper trend management and using
identied trends along with broad
experience of internal employees to
guide various innovation activities.
Of course, not every trend has a high
strategic value to us. This means that
we carefully analyse every trend and
lter down to the most important
ones. Those that have a high value to
us, are called ‘focus elds’.”
Popa added: “Those focus elds
allow us to start activities with inter-
nal and external partners that have a
direct impact on our cyber security
strategy. All activities around a focus
eld serve the purpose to explore it
further. This includes piloting start-
up solutions or research projects
with universities.”
For each focus eld, the ultimate
aim is to create ideas or innovation
projects. However, there are a signi-
cant number of different steps before
an idea evolves into an innovation
project. For this, Siemens Energy has
the CYBER LAB, its place of innova-
tion project execution. It is where it
executes those ideas and projects –
either to success or failure.
“There is a pool of ideas that we
have to manage, orchestrate and exe-
cute,” said Popa. “It’s about coming
from a very fuzzy front-end to a clear
innovation execution process within
the CYBER LAB.”
Ammerl added: “In our CYBER
LAB we cannot and should not be the
ones to do the entire work – from
scouting trends to the very end-point
of implementing cyber security solu-
tions in our products. So, there are
several interaction points within the
CYBER LAB to conduct projects to-
gether with experts in cyber security,
who can really support in bringing
projects to life.”
Siemens Energy stresses the impor-
tance of working together. While
there are always issues surrounding
condentiality, it says that “true col-
laboration” within the industry across
borders and regions is key.
Popa said: “This is where our third
activity stream ‘Collaborations’ really
pays off. We are trying to shape our
cyber security innovation ecosystem
with internal and external partners.
Therefore, we are always looking for
strategic partners to support us in
Popa says Siemens Energy wants to take a proactive approach
by identifying new market trends and new technologies
Ammerl says innovation and cyber security are not “a well-
known couple” in the energy industry
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Special Supplement: Cyber security
is a huge benet to Ammerl and Popa,
whose focus is on paving the way to a
cyber-resilient future for the company.
Noting the advantage of this, Am-
merl said: “Paving the way for us
means, to provide the best possible
circumstances for Siemens Energy to
drive innovation in the eld of cyber
security. Making use of those bene-
cial circumstances is a team effort,
for which we need the full support of
all our colleagues – not only in cyber
security. Of course, this innovation
journey cannot be successful without
an innovation-friendly culture.”
Establishing an innovation culture
for cyber security will, however, be a
challenge.
Popa noted: “In the end it is all
about people. For us the additional
challenge is that there was no com-
mon understanding of how to do in-
novation in cyber security at the be-
ginning. Nevertheless, we knew that
we have so many great experts and
knowledge within our organisation.
So it was just a question of how to
activate this for our cyber security
innovation purposes.
“It’s about: how we can work with
them; how we can create a network,
improve our culture in terms of cyber
security innovation. We are creating
and shaping our own cyber security
network within Siemens Energy with
the main objective to break down silos
between departments, functions,
business units and regions.”
Despite the tasks and challenges
ahead, Ammerl and Popa remain
highly condent of the prospects for
the new department and are happy
with the achievements across the
business.
Ammerl summarised: “We have
managed to achieve a lot so far, yet
we have still a long way to go to
achieve the vision of a cyber-resilient
future in this highly volatile world.”
Popa added: “The threat landscape
is growing every day, and we cannot
change that. The question is how we
deal with it. Our key message is that
we need to focus our cyber innovation
to prepare Siemens Energy and its
customers as well as we can for this
volatile future.”
Siemens Energy’s
CYBER LAB is the executive
place for intrapreneurs (Cyber.
preneur), trend management
and execution (Cyber.explore)
and Collaborations (Cyber.
partner)
Orbit Ecosystem: the backbone of Siemens Energy’s
innovation framework
Digitalisation, cyber security risks, constant transformation through innovation, and a changing market
environment inuence Siemens Energy’s cyber security strategy and require constant monitoring. As
the digital backbone of all topics related to digitalisation targeting protability increase, innovation, and
cyber security, Siemens Energy’s Orbit Ecosystem is designed to strengthen transparency and cross-
organisational collaboration to future-proof the entire organisation.
Siemens Energy’s Orbit Ecosystem is powered by Itonics, an AI-powered platform combined with a
systematic framework designed to steer innovation efforts. It helps companies to identify emerging
technologies, trends, and market potential and to translate them into customised growth strategies.
With more than 125 experts on ve continents, Itonics supports innovation leaders such as Adidas,
Audi, BMW, Cisco, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, and Siemens Energy.
The new platform acts as a go-to space at Siemens Energy for collecting and enriching all information
relating to innovation, digitisation, and cyber security. It allows idea generators, innovators, and experts
to drive cutting-edge solution concepts. Besides creating maximum transparency across all functions,
this also gives employees at Siemens Energy the opportunity to play an active part in shaping the
future direction of their company.
The Orbit Ecosystem is split into three focus areas:
n The Cyber security Orbit prepares Siemens Energy for a cyber-resilient future by allowing teams to
scan, analyse, and prepare for new threats and trends;
n The Innovation Orbit channels collective intelligence to create transparency of innovation processes,
topics, and ideas;
n The Digitalisation Orbit accelerates digital transformation to generate business.
Axel Bitsch, Senior Digitalisation Programme Management Expert, Siemens Energy, said: “By launch-
ing the Siemens Energy Orbit Ecosystem with Itonics, we can leverage our internal expert communities
to their full potential and foster transparency, company-wide collaboration, and co-creation.”
THE ENERGY INDUSTRY TIMES - JULY 2022
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Special Supplement: Cyber security
edge exchange within the company.”
So exactly what is Cyber security
Orbit and how does it organise Sie-
mens Energy’s innovation process?
Ammerl explained: “In the past,
companies initiated their innovation
projects often through a ‘yes’ or ‘no’
by decision-makers. The potential
problem here was that this decision
did not have enough data to back it up.
By utilising a big data approach, the
Cyber security Orbit is helping us
now to enrich decisions with even
more data and thus increasing the ac-
ceptance level of innovation projects.
It helps to structure the decision-
making process, enrich it with experi-
ence of our colleagues and rene it
with the strength of big data. It trawls
the internet through an algorithm to
help us grow our database so we can
identify trends relevant to us and start
the innovation process.”
Based on key words, it browses for
items including new cyber security
patents, or elds of interest such as
blockchain-type security.
“We want to know what are the lat-
est and strongest ‘signals’, as we call
them, in innovation management.
These signals could be a news article,
patent or anything popping up in the
market,” said Ammerl. “Those sig-
nals are then taken and converted into
micro-trends; so the system is giving
us a recommendation in terms of what
might be interesting for us. This will
then be linked to the innovation proj-
ects and different experts. This is re-
ally the strength of our Cyber security
Orbit as it helps us to relate any ongo-
ing project to insights coming from
big data.”
So far, the system has been work-
ing well, says Siemens Energy and,
as with any new system, it is being
continually adapted and improved to
suit the existing culture. The plan is
to have several iterations throughout
the year to adjust its cyber security
objectives and make strategic deci-
sions accordingly.
For all these ambitious activities
and goals, the Cyber Security Innova-
tion group needs manpower. The fu-
ture plan is to further ramp-up the
team for driving innovation manage-
ment in cyber security with more
resources. This will be an important
addition to the group of experts
working in cyber security across
Siemens Energy.
Having such a large group of experts
