Imagine implementing a cybersecurity solution into your technology, which disrupted your organization’s daily operations, caused delays, and simply didn’t work as well as it was supposed to.
Now, imagine implementing the same solution into a digital clone of your technology, helping you to avoid these disruptions and test the effectiveness of the given cybersecurity solution.
That’s exactly what Digital Twins help you achieve – they offer a real-time online equivalent of a physical object or process, which allows you to test different solutions and overcome the lack of clarity.
According to the reports, the digital twin market is expected to reach $204.56 million by 2031, highlighting the importance of this technology in today’s digital landscape.
In this article, we will tell you about seven different benefits that digital twins can provide to your organization to boost your cyber preparedness.
Simply put, digital twin is a technology that organizations use to virtually clone their network systems and create replicas with the intention to train their teams and systems by running simulations in a secure environment.
At the same time, this technology offers the opportunity to analyze, monitor, and optimize the performance of physical counterparts in real-time.
Generally, digital twins are designed to reflect physical objects and create visual representations of them. You can take any asset and replicate its functionality, features, and behavior in a way that feels real for testing purposes.
There are two different types of digital twins – the first type is used to create the exact replicas, and the second type is used to create meaningful replicas. Organizations can choose which of these options they want to go with depending on their specific use case.
For example, when we talk about creating replicas for satellites and other space objects, then it is essential to create the exact replica to ensure the security of every detail. But, if you need to test 5,000 desktops for your organization’s system, then you can create 500 meaningful replicas of them and conduct tests.
Using digital twins to ensure the safety of your technology and make your solutions more trustworthy comes with lots of benefits.
Let’s have a look at the most prominent benefits that digital twins can bring to an organization:
The first and one of the most prominent benefits that digital twin technology offers is the ability to test out new ideas and increase technical reliability of your solutions.
Implementing new technologies into the existing solutions can be challenging at times. It is important to have accurate information about the technicalities that the overall process requires.
At the same time, you need to make sure that this new solution doesn’t disrupt the ongoing operations, which might cause a slowing down on the business side and increase the time for implementation even more.
Using digital twin technology, this process is much simpler – it allows you to test out new solutions in the model it creates for you without having to interrupt the ongoing operations and production.
Besides testing your own solutions, there are multiple vendors on the market constantly offering their services to help you enhance your capabilities.
However, it is crucial to make sure that every single vendor you work with is compatible with your technology and help you to address your company’s needs in certain areas of development.
In other words, when there are too many solutions to choose from, it is important to understand which ones serve your needs the most.
Thanks to digital twins, you can run multiple tests and understand which one of those solutions has the biggest compatibility with your technology to make better decisions for your organization.
The abundance of technology is a specific challenge for preparedness management. This is especially relevant in the field of cyber security, where new technologies can be invasive and interrupt lots of processes along the way.
Digital twins, on the other hand, enable the high-level protection and analysis of different systems with a low impact with the ongoing processes. This technology has the ability to identify critical assets and facilitate infrastructure assessment processes.
It works through the cloning system, which creates the exact replicas of the technology you would like to test. This automated real-time platform can help you simulate attacks and visualize the system to identify potential risks.
When it comes to comparing digital twins with cyber range technology, you should remember that digital twins are used to test out different technological solutions, and cyber ranges are used to play out and test different scenarios.
Companies and organizations can also use digital twins to create safe environments for the training purposes of their teams.
This technology can provide an immersive training environment and replicate real-world assets where employees can experience them in a controlled setting, eliminating the possibility of causing actual damages to an organization.
This benefit is especially useful for remote learning purposes in hazardous environments, which eliminates the need for employees to physically experience high-risk situations throughout the training.
The whole process overall helps an organization to reduce costs, increase operational efficiency, and lower the risk of damage during different exercises.
Digital twin technology is an irreplaceable option in some specific use cases, like ensuring the security of satellites in space and improving the overall safety of this field.
Space assets are fundamentally important for the whole space environment, which underpins the European economy and military presence.
However, as the space-based assets become more interconnected and reliant on digital systems, there are increasingly higher chances of them becoming attractive targets for dangerous cyber attacks.
That’s why it is crucial to implement digital twin technology in the testing process and ensure the security of space technologies at the highest level.
As the world becomes more interconnected, the concept of a smart city is becoming increasingly popular.
The obvious challenge that this kind of development brings is that cities highly rely on IoT (Internet of Things), which increases the risks for their systems and data to be targeted by hackers – electric scooters, e-bikes, and self-driving cars are all part of these systems.
Digital twin technology proves to be extremely useful in this case as well – they allow the simulation of systems before implementation, making sure to expose problems and solve them before they offer services to the public.
Another benefit that digital twins bring to organizations is that they can save costs while ensuring the high-level security of your systems.
This happens by figuring out different ways to save energy, reduce waste, and avoid downtime of your production. At the same time, it helps with making more effective decisions and problem solving backed with reliable data about your systems.
Besides, all of the cybersecurity issues that companies are solving with the help of digital twin technologies also help to save costs by avoiding potential data breaches and cyber attacks on their systems.
Digital twin technology is an irreplaceable asset when it comes to ensuring the trustworthiness of your solutions. It can help you ensure the security of your solutions on the highest level, improve your cyber preparedness, and save your costs in the process.
CybExer Technologies has been a driving force in the cybersecurity field since 2016. Committed to enhancing global cybersecurity capabilities, we offer advanced solutions to help organizations boost their cyber resilience.
If you’d like to learn more about our offering and products, feel free to schedule a call with our cyber range and digital twin experts to discuss your organization’s needs.