23 September 2026
Petards has signed up to the UK Government backed Cyber Resilience Pledge. The move reinforces our commitment as an SME to deliver safer and more cyber-resilient systems across both rail and defence.
The Pledge is a voluntary initiative which aims to enhance cybersecurity resilience among organisations across the UK. Specifically, is encourages three core actions to:
- Make cyber a board-level responsibility.
- Sign up to the National Cyber Security Centre’s Early Warning service to receive notifications of potential cyber threats.
- Achieve Cyber Essentials certification across supply chains.
For Petards, signing the pledge was an obvious next step. Cyber resilience is becoming inseparable from safety, availability and operational effectiveness. It’s a topic that we fully expect to cover when we exhibit at InnoTrans 2026, in Messe Berlin this week (22-25 September 2026).
As the platforms we develop become increasingly connected, cybersecurity can no longer be treated as something added at the end of the development lifecycle. It needs to be considered from the earliest stages of architecture and product design, through development, verification, deployment and ongoing in-service support.
Petards already holds ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus, providing an important foundation for how information security is managed across our business. Alongside this, we continue to evolve product development lifecycles in alignment with IEC/EN 62443, embedding security principles into the way that future products and platforms are designed and maintained.
For rail, this is particularly important as traditionally isolated onboard systems become increasingly connected to wider train and landside networks. For defence, the same principles apply in an environment where system integrity, availability and resilience can be mission-critical.
The value is not only in the products we have already delivered, but in the lessons learned from designing, assuring, deploying and supporting them in service over many years. Those lessons allow Petards to approach new challenges with proven engineering principles, real-world operational experience and a clear understanding that vision systems used in safety-critical environments have to be dependable first, and intelligent second.
Paul Henderson is Software Team Lead at Petards. He said: “The challenge is not simply to make connected systems secure on the day they enter service. It’s to design architectures that can remain secure, supportable and resilient throughout long operational lifecycles while continuing to evolve as threats and technology change. Signing the UK Cyber Resilience Pledge is another step in that journey and one we are immensely proud to support.”
Petards at InnoTrans 2026
At InnoTrans, our focus remains firmly on advancing Petards Rail’s established portfolio of onboard safety, video, connectivity and intelligent systems. This will be supported with a live demonstration of our next generation technologies including Automatic Selective Door Operation, Driver Controlled Operation and Correct Side Door Enablement.
Members of Petards’ senior management, engineering, software and business development teams look forward to seeing familiar faces, meeting new people and reconnecting with industry colleagues, as InnoTrans celebrates its third decade (find us in the RIA Pavilion, Hall 2.2, Booth 460S).