Challenges in online collaboration to augment Industry 4.0

The upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic has made organisations transit their employees to work from home (WFH) using online collaborations. WFH culture offers advantages like increased productivity, reduced business travel, compact office politics, more focused time, etc., in line with the goals of Industry 4.0. However, there may be risks due to system flaws generated by online collaboration, which may allow an attacker to access the system and lead to breaches of security, privacy and trust during online collaboration. The paper presents a framework for online collaboration using three important issues of security, privacy and trust. It presents different incidents related to the importance of each of the issues and factors affecting them during online collaboration. The framework will help in the design of online collaboration policies for Industry 4.0 environment. © 2024 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.