Reasons why UAE employees lack trust in robots

Employees in the UAE trust robots in performing ordinary tasks in logistics, transportation and cleaning, but are less willing to trust them with life critical functions, such as performing surgeries, flying airplanes without pilots, managing dangerous manufacturing or pharmaceutical production.

According to a research by cybersecurity company Kaspersky, one of the reasons for the lack of trust in robots is the belief that they are prone to cyberattacks: this point of view is supported by 70 per cent of employees in the UAE.

Employees see robots fit to perform some duties, but unfit for others. For instance, 84 per cent trust robots to do cleaning, 77 per cent trust them in delivering parcels and orders.

At the same time, less than half of employees trust robots in tasks such as managing dangerous manufacturing, and only a third of respondents trust robots to perform a surgery.

These concerns can be explained by the fact that more than half of all employees point out it’s unclear who bears responsibility if robots fail in their duties due to an equipment malfunction or a cyberattack. And 52 per cent of employees believe that if robots malfunction, they can cause physical threat to humans.

“Today robotics is used together with industrial control systems and other information technology to handle production processes, replacing manual labour and improving efficiency, speed, quality and performance,” said Emad Haffar, head of Technical Experts at Kaspersky.

“Our research shows a split in employees’ opinion on the duties that robots are fit to carry out. While employees in general are ready for robots to perform unskilled duties, such as cleaning and order delivery, the majority are not ready to trust robots with critical functions which, if done wrong, could cause financial damage or be a physical threat to humans.”

To keep your systems protected from various threats, Kaspersky recommends:

• Conducting regular security assessments of operational technology (OT) systems to identify and eliminate possible cybersecurity issues.
• Establishing continuous vulnerability assessment and triage as a base for effective vulnerability management process.
• Performing timely updates for the key components of the enterprise’s OT network.
• Improving the response to new and advanced malicious techniques by building and strengthening the teams’ incident prevention, detection and response skills.

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