What it means
Security and safety become inseparable when digital systems control vehicles, medical devices, industrial processes, buildings, weapons, utilities, or other physical functions. A security event can create a safety hazard, and a safety mechanism can influence security behavior.
How it works
Engineering teams analyze malicious and accidental causes together, identify hazardous states, design fail-safe or fail-secure behavior, constrain privileges, segment critical functions, monitor abnormal conditions, and preserve manual or independent protective mechanisms where appropriate.
An industrial control system may reject unauthorized commands for security, yet an emergency shutdown must remain available under defined hazardous conditions. The design must prevent abuse without blocking the action needed to protect people and equipment.
Practical focus
- Include safety engineers and operators in cybersecurity analysis
- Identify physical consequences and hazardous states
- Define secure degradation, emergency authority, and manual fallback
- Test security controls under abnormal and emergency conditions
Common mistakes
- Treating every confidentiality goal as more important than human safety
- Applying office-IT controls without considering real-time operations
- Assuming safety systems are isolated from cyber threats
Certification relevance
This subject appears in or supports the following certification bodies of knowledge: