Pharmaceutical manufacturers are developing and using Configuration Management Databases (CMDB) to maintain inventories of the IT and automation assets used by the manufacturing and laboratory systems at their production facilities. A CMDB can provide access to accurate data, including available assets, where they are, how they are configured, and the relationships that exist between them; all of which are vital functions for lifecycle management, change management, incident management and patching.
The information model typically used by the standard CMDB installation is based on the idea that all systems used by the enterprise are software based and described by a class of objects called an application. This does not always align to the needs within an operations technology (OT) environment. Therefore, the BioPhorum Cyber Security members, using their extensive combined knowledge, have collaborated to design a common information model describing a manufacturing system detailed in a shop floor/OT CMDB. The proposed model is intended to be a free, reusable, standard structure which can be adapted for specific company needs, providing a good starting point for configuration data modelers working in the OT space.
