Functional Safety and Cybersecurity for AI-Enabled Systems: An Expert Panel 

What You’ll Learn
How do you keep connected and remotely accessible systems both secure and safe as AI takes on a larger role in how they behave?

As safety-critical systems, including robotics, physical AI, and industrial applications, extend beyond traditional boundaries through cloud connectivity, remote interfaces, and networked operations, cybersecurity has outgrown its role as a purely IT concern. It is now a fundamental component of system safety. AI is accelerating that shift on both sides at once, changing the threat surface security teams defend and the behavior safety engineers must bound and verify. Our panel examines how the two disciplines are becoming increasingly interconnected, what AI is changing in each of them, and what that means for engineering, compliance, and risk management.

This panel will give you a clearer understanding of how cyber threats can directly impact safety-critical functions, why regulatory frameworks are shifting, and how to integrate both cybersecurity and safety requirements early in the design lifecycle. Addressing these issues early is the difference between building in resilience and facing costly redesigns, compliance delays, or reputational risk down the line.

What This Panel Covers
Our panelists examine the intersection of functional safety and cybersecurity, focusing on practical challenges and actionable strategies for internet-connected and remotely accessible products, including:

• Cybersecurity for internet-connected and remotely accessible products. Understanding the expanding attack surface in networked systems, and what it means for product design, lifecycle management, and risk exposure.
• Functional safety and cybersecurity convergence. How two traditionally separate disciplines are becoming increasingly interdependent, and why integrated approaches are now essential for overall system integrity.
• What AI changes in both. How learning-based systems complicate threat modeling on the security side and verification on the safety side, and why the two analyses increasingly depend on each other.
• Cyber threats as safety risks. Examining how malicious attacks on network-accessible systems can create hazardous situations, and why threat analysis must be part of the safety analysis.
• CRA compliance challenges. An overview of emerging regulatory expectations under the Cyber Resilience Act, and the practical implications for manufacturers and engineering teams.
• Practical steps toward readiness. Concrete guidance on aligning development processes, strengthening cross-functional collaboration, and embedding safety and security considerations early to reduce redesign risk and compliance exposure.

Who Should Attend
Closing the gap between cybersecurity and functional safety requires collaboration across disciplines. Professionals involved in the development, validation, or governance of safety-critical internet-connected or remotely accessible products will find the session directly relevant, including:

• System engineers and solution architects
• Functional safety engineers
• Cybersecurity specialists and product security leads
• AI and machine learning engineers working on physical systems
• Engineering managers and technical decision-makers
• Compliance, quality, and regulatory professionals

Organizations developing or deploying robotics, physical AI, or other safety-critical systems where remote access or network connectivity could introduce risks with potential safety impacts will get the most from the discussion. Whether you are early in your development lifecycle or working toward regulatory compliance, you will leave with the insights to build a stronger, more resilient approach.

Panelists

• Ferdaousse Ziari, Director of Engineering, Europe, Reynolds & Moore
• David Beam, P.E., Principal AI Safety Engineer, Reynolds & Moore
• Stefano Floridan, Senior Global Sales Product Specialist, UL Solutions
• David Reade, EU Regulatory Affairs Program Manager, Rockwell Automation
• Paolo Viviani, Safety Architect, Omron Industrial Automation Europe