FANUC CNC replacement program safeguards against cyberattacks

FANUC America, a supplier of CNCs and robotics based in Hoffman Estates, Ill., has introduced an upgrade program for legacy CNC machines running on operating systems older than Windows 10. The Panel i Replacement Program retrofits FANUC CNCs with an industrial PC available with touch or nontouch LCD, solid-state drives, and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise.

The manufacturer’s CNCs running on obsolete operating systems, such as Windows 7, XP, or older, are no longer supported by Microsoft and therefore not receiving their critical updates. For machines that connect to an online network, this can leave sensitive manufacturing equipment open to major cybersecurity breaches. Retrofitting industrial PCs on these machines allows businesses to connect their CNCs to their network safely and take advantage of Industrial Internet of Things data.