Abstract
Our paper explores how IT security issues affect the implementation of Industry 4.0 in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector. To develop this research question, we will carry out an empirical study, with a survey of 3,184 manufacturing SMEs, using the “Flash Eurobarometer No. 486” database from Eurostat (European Union). Using machine-learning methodology (ML), our contribution extends previous literature on the barriers to the digital transformation of SMEs, showing the role that IT security issues play in this process. First, our results show that IT security issues positively affect the digitalization of companies, being perceived as challenging that impulse of digitalization in SMEs. Second, our results show heterogeneity in levels of digitization, with a wide spectrum, from companies integrating digital technologies with a variety of complexity, such as robots, cloud computing or smart devices, to a group of companies that are incipient in the development of Industry 4.0. Finally, our paper contributes by highlighting that the effect of IT security issues is heterogeneous, with existing parallelism between the degree of digitization and IT security.