Global Rail 2025: Digital Maintenance – An Expensive Cybersecurity Blind Spot

We’re excited to announce that RazorSecure CEO, Alex Cowan, will be speaking at Global Rail 2025 on 1 October at 11:00. His session, Digital Maintenance – An Expensive Cybersecurity Blind Spot, will explore the hidden risks and costly inefficiencies in current maintenance practices for on-board rail systems – and how the industry can address them.

The Growing Challenge of Digital Maintenance in Rail

As the rail industry continues to digitise, cybersecurity risks are rising. Train operators and maintainers face a new reality: the operational overhead of maintaining on-board digital systems – from software updates to configuration changes – is becoming a significant challenge.

A modern train can host up to 500 distinct networked devices, each containing software and external connectivity. This creates a large attack surface for potential malicious activity. To ensure reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety, these systems require constant upkeep: security patches, software updates, configuration adjustments, and data retrieval.

The Risks of Current Practices

Today, most digital maintenance is still performed manually by service technicians physically connecting a service laptop to the train. While common, this approach is:

• Poorly managed – lacking appropriate security controls.
• Difficult to audit – with little or no logging, making traceability nearly impossible.
• Prone to security vulnerabilities – service laptops often run outdated software and lack proper access controls, creating insider threats (whether intentional or accidental).
  
  This outdated model not only increases cybersecurity risk, but also drives higher operational costs. Trains may be tied up in depots for hours while updates are applied, and human errors or configuration mistakes can add further expense.
   

Rising Standards and Regulatory Pressure

Industry cybersecurity standards are becoming stricter, placing clear requirements on operators:

• Implement access controls to prevent unauthorised access to critical systems.
• Reduce the risk of exploitation by applying security updates promptly.
• Current manual processes make meeting these requirements slow, costly, and unreliable.

Join the Discussion at Global Rail 2025
During his presentation at Global Rail 2025, Alex Cowan will share insights on both mitigating cybersecurity risks in digital maintenance and improving cost, speed, and efficiency through innovative approaches.

Event details:
Date & Time: 1 October 2025, 11:00-11.20
Location: Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre


RazorSecure will be in Abu Dhabi from 30 September – 2 October, joining industry leaders to discuss the evolving rail landscape. To arrange a meeting at the event, please contact us below.