David Saldanha, Managing Director, Wavesight highlights the difficulties in keeping safety and security systems reliably connected in modern factories.
Walk into any manufacturing site and you see a range of solutions deployed e.g.: Cameras sit on gantries, badges hang on collars, sensors thread through production lines, wearables sit on maintenance teams, alarms are configured in control rooms, to name a few.
Yet when a serious incident occurs, a near miss, a breach, a safety event, investigations reveal the same familiar gap.
The camera froze, the wearable dropped offline and the alert arrived after the danger had already passed. Systems existed. They did not remain connected when it mattered most.
That disconnect sits at the intersection of three realities few organisations acknowledge directly.
First, safety and security systems are still deployed as discrete silos rather than integrated operations.
Second, the physical environments where these systems operate are hostile to conventional networks.
Third, the speed at which factory layouts, temporary zones and operational demands change now outpaces the ability of traditional infrastructure to adapt.
Together, these create an operational security exposure that no amount of algorithmic sophistication can solve.
The question is not whether the right tools are in place, it is whether the infrastructure beneath them remains reliable when it is tested.
Factories deploy broad safety and security coverage: Perimeter video, access control, lone worker wearables, machine safety sensors, environmental monitoring for gas, heat and vibration.
On paper, this looks comprehensive, in practice, these systems operate in parallel rather than as a unified fabric.
The problem is not capability, it is integration under operational conditions.
When an incident occurs on the shop floor, do all relevant systems respond together, in real time?
Too often, the answer is no, not because the devices are inadequate, but because integration depends on continuous, deterministic data flow with low packet loss and predictable latency.
A gas leak triggers a wearable alarm, the device detects elevated levels and sends an alert, but the network drops intermittently during peak shift activity.
The alert reaches the control room only after the area has been evacuated, the system worked technically, it failed operationally.
No investigation would cite inadequate sensors, all of them would note the delay in alert delivery and the lack of real-time telemetry.
True integration requires real-time video, low-latency alerts, seamless roaming handoff and consistent performance in hard zones, not just core areas.
Without these, integration remains architectural rather than operational.
Systems exist, but they do not behave as a single safety fabric.
Smart factories expose networks to stresses they were never built to withstand.
Heavy machinery, dense metal structures, moving vehicles, temporary layouts and harsh conditions all work against conventional connectivity assumptions, steel racking creates coverage gaps.
Forklifts and AGVs move constantly across the floor, forcing the network to keep devices connected without drops or handoff delays.
High-definition and thermal cameras run continuously, pushing sustained bandwidth rather than short bursts of traffic.
Emergency alarms and safety interlocks leave no room for delay; latency is measured in milliseconds, not seconds.
During line expansions or shutdowns, temporary zones come online fast and still need full security coverage, often without the option of running new cable.
All of this sits alongside heavy machinery generating electromagnetic interference that steadily erodes Wi-Fi reliability.
Daily failures: Cameras freeze during peak activity, alerts arrive late, workers move into blind spots, investigations lack footage, temporary buildouts are often left with minimal monitoring.
When incidents follow, the root cause is not software, it is connectivity failing under operational load.
Most factory Wi-Fi deployments offer excellent performance in certain locations, at certain times, for certain devices, that is acceptable for email, it is intolerable for safety systems.
A camera that delivers flawless 4K for 95% of a shift and stalls during the critical 5% is worse than useless.
It creates the illusion of protection without substance.
Every factory faces the same choice: Extend office networks into factories or treat connectivity as critical infrastructure.
Wired networks offer stability but resist flexibility.
Every change requires planning, downtime and physical intervention.
Wi-Fi provides mobility, but contention, latency spikes, interference and inconsistent roaming are unavoidable.
Network segmentation and traffic prioritisation are often absent, leaving safety systems vulnerable.
Private wireless networks, including private LTE and private 5G, respond to industrial requirements existing networks fail to meet.
Deterministic latency for safety-critical applications, guaranteed Quality of Service for video and sensor traffic, seamless mobility across large sites, centralised control over spectrum, access and performance, rapid deployment and reconfiguration without extensive civil works, hybrid architectures, combining private wireless with wired infrastructure and managed Wi-Fi, represent the realistic path forward.
Network strategy is no longer an IT decision, it is a safety, operations and risk management decision.
Factories do not pause for perfect network designs, new production lines are installed under tight deadlines, layouts shift around supply constraints, contractors arrive on short notice.
If extending coverage requires weeks of design and cabling, the network will always lag behind operations.
In that gap, improvisation flourishes. Personal hotspots, ad hoc repeaters and unapproved devices become routine, the safety architecture dissolves, wireless industrial networks change this dynamic, coverage extends rapidly, devices can be provisioned centrally, policies update remotely, visibility follows operational change rather than lagging it.
Smart factory security is not about more dashboards or more data. It is about trust that systems will function reliably when needed most.
That trust is earned at the network layer, not the application layer.
When integration is real, risks remain visible.
When connectivity is designed for industrial reality, safety stops being reactive and becomes embedded in daily operations.
The factories making measurable progress are not those with the most technology.
They are those where every system, every person and every machine stays reliably connected, regardless of movement, scale or complexity.
At Wavesight, we help design and deploy industrial wireless networks that keep critical systems connected even when conditions are evolving and are challenging.
This article was originally published in the March edition of Security Journal UK. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.
