Digital Twin Consortium® (DTC) published a foundational paper entitled Assuring Trustworthiness in Dynamic Systems Using Digital Twins and Trust Vectors. The paper provides guidance to help organizations design digital twins securely and safely for digital transformation. It presents an understandable and interoperable model for digital twins’ security and safety assurance that satisfies all stakeholders: technical, business, and regulatory.
“Many initiatives and standards for security exist, but they don’t consider all five trustworthiness characteristics – safety, security, privacy, resilience, and reliability – and that can result in losses,” said Anto Budiardjo, CEO of Padi, Inc. “Similarly, safety standards for mechanical systems are mature and respected but are not necessarily able to address all concerns with dynamic and complex software-based systems. To use digital twins successfully, operators must have visibility and control over all five trustworthiness characteristics.”
“Traditionally, organizations have relied upon static security and safety assurance cases, which aren’t suitable in a digital-first world,” said Jon Geater, Chief Product & Technology Officer, and Co-Founder at RKVST, Inc. “Things move too fast, supply chains are too deep, and systems are too complex for manual checklists, outdated standards, and annual audits. Organizations must account for a constantly changing environment, evolving threat landscapes, and rapid decision-making.”
“Digital twins are the ideal starting point to provide a means to achieve trustworthiness for systems that require continuous decisions in changing situations,” said Detlev Richter, Vice President TÜV SÜD Product Service GmbH. “Time-critical assurance and decision-making need a flexible system that can make decisions in real-time to prevent vulnerable problems resulting from static measures while reaching new productivity levels. Digital twins with trust vectors provide a means to achieve this.”
Trustworthiness can become part of the digital twin architecture when organizations build assessments of changes within the lifecycle into digital-twin capabilities. Then, asset owners can make changes to machines or configurations that are safe and that do not generate an unacceptably high downtime during validation. Digital twins can achieve adaptability, flexibility, and uptime in production environments.
“Organizations must implement trustworthiness processes and technologies to support business operations and achieve business outcomes with less risk and more confidence,” said Frederick Hirsch, independent consultant, and member of the Industry IoT Consortium/DTC Security & Trustworthiness Working Group. “We must move to a world of dynamic assurance cases where standards are outcome-based, and target processes and system properties change according to need.”
