Industrial automation and control systems (IACS) are vital components in various industries. Incidents in the past, highlighted the magnitude of impacts arising from attacks, such as disruptions of power supply or in manufacturing plants. In order to adequately react on incidents and analyze deliberate attacks on IACS, it is indispensable to have appropriate forensics capabilities in this area. Based on an analysis of existing approaches and recent research results, this paper provides an overview of significant challenges that need to be overcome as prerequisites for building effective and efficient forensic capabilities for IACS. The classification and typology of Digital Forensic Readiness (DFR) in IACS requirements presented in this paper, pave the way to better integrate forensic capabilities into future IACS systems. As smart manufacturing is now a focus of designing and implementing the next generation of IACS systems, a unique opportunity arises for introducing forensic capabilities at the system design level without having to re-engineer whole infrastructures. At the same time the much higher dependence on IT infrastructures and the resulting temptation for criminals are creating an environment in which such forensic capabilities become indispensable. This paper can therefore be considered as an initial step, laying the foundations for the development of a generic forensic analysis model in smart manufacturing environments.

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