Why BMS Cybersecurity Is Now a Critical Engineering Issue

Building management systems were designed for reliability and interoperability, not security. Older BACnet, Modbus, and LON networks assumed physical security was sufficient protection — an attacker would need to be in the building to reach the control network. That assumption no longer holds. As BAS systems have migrated to IP networks, gained web interfaces for remote management, and integrated with enterprise IT systems and cloud platforms, they have become accessible from the internet — and from any device on the corporate network.