Renewable vitality is a quickly rising section of the vitality business. Applied sciences comparable to wind, photo voltaic, biomass, geothermal, and vitality storage at the moment are thought-about mainstream. Nevertheless, all of those websites require safe connectivity to allow vital distant monitoring and management.
Renewable vitality firms should join an array of renewable vitality belongings unfold throughout broad geographic areas. Many renewable asset operators additionally use private and non-private cloud-based purposes, together with SCADA. They want a community structure that’s easy to deploy at scale throughout quite a few distributed websites and but extremely safe to make sure cyber threats don’t impression uptime.
SD-WAN is prepared for prime time with distributed vitality sources
Enterprises have extensively deployed Software program Outlined WAN (SD-WAN) over the previous 10 years to deal with comparable necessities: connecting distant websites utilizing whichever networking expertise is offered, simplifying administration of the infrastructure, providing seamless entry to purposes wherever they’re hosted, delivering assurance for purposes particularly for distant customers, and providing a really excessive stage of safety all through the community.
Most renewable vitality firms at this time are used to constructing massive networks using applied sciences comparable to Web Protocol Safety (IPsec) and Dynamic Multipoint Digital Non-public Community (DMVPN) to encrypt crucial Supervisory Management and Information Acquisition (SCADA) communications. They’re utilizing Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for the underlying transport community, and public or personal mobile for distant websites with no different WAN connectivity.
SD-WAN brings these applied sciences collectively and allows automation to significantly simplify deployments and supply unmatched cybersecurity advantages out-of-the-box:
- Safe zero contact deployment of area gateways, that means no area employees is required to configure a gateway.
- Easy provisioning of service VPNs to segregate visitors (SCADA, CCTV, IP telephony, and so forth.).
- Templated configurations making it straightforward to alter configuration and push it to gateways whereas making certain compliance of all area belongings to approved templates.
- Utility of unified safety insurance policies throughout a various vary of distant websites and gear.
- Managing a number of backhaul connectivity choices on the gateway together with personal MPLS for crucial SCADA visitors and mobile for backup and even internet-based connections for non-critical visitors, the place acceptable.
- Lifecycle administration of gateways, comparable to firmware updates, alarm monitoring and statistics.
Simplifying connecting massive, distributed infrastructures
Deploying an SD-WAN overlay additionally permits the renewable vitality firm to manage the end-to-end IP addressing schemes and take away the necessity to engineer advanced routing plans based mostly on the underlying transport community, very often supplied by a third-party service supplier. This divorces the underlying transport community from the overlay community. Therefore, it simplifies operational duties and offers a safer overlay community for crucial monitoring and management visitors.
Wouldn’t it’s helpful to have a single answer with a selection of commercial ruggedized gateways for various web site varieties? We expect so, and Cisco offers a number of industrial routers to go well with all deployment websites and could be managed as a part of the Cisco SD-WAN answer.
Cisco industrial routers such because the Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Sequence Routers for bigger websites, Catalyst IR1100 Rugged Sequence Routers and Catalyst IR1800 Rugged Sequence Routers for smaller websites all function as SD-WAN edge gateways alongside with the well-known Cisco enterprise routers (digital and bodily), which can be utilized for management facilities, cloud areas and different operational websites to offer a single overlay community connecting to any web site.
Unifying networking and cybersecurity
Cisco’s SD-WAN answer additionally offers a broad set of cybersecurity options, simplifying coverage creation and deployment to the sting gateways. Superior safety capabilities comparable to:
- Firewall with software consciousness (NGFW) to filter visitors in actual time and supply granular management able to detecting 1000’s of purposes.
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDS/IPS) with Talos® signatures to determine and block recognized threats and malicious actions comparable to vulnerability exploits.
- Superior malware safety strategies, together with signature-based and behavior-based evaluation, to determine and block recognized and unknown malware threats.
- URL filtering to dam or permit customers to entry URLs based mostly on greater than 80 net classes protecting hundreds of thousands of domains and billions of webpages.
- Safe entry to cloud and web sources with Cisco Umbrella® which mixes safe net gateway, DNS safety, cloud-delivered firewall, cloud entry safety dealer performance, and menace intelligence to guard in opposition to web threats.
Managing cyber dangers to drive regulatory compliance
Additional to securing the perimeter and connectivity to the renewable vitality web site, Cisco offers additional safety instruments that may be leveraged ‘excessive’ to extend the safety posture of the positioning:
- Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient offers asset house owners full visibility into units related to their industrial networks, communication patterns, vulnerabilities, and software flows to assist assess the OT safety posture. Renewable vitality firms now have exact info to know their cyber dangers, implement safety greatest practices, and drive compliance with cybersecurity rules comparable to NERC CIP or NIS2.
- Cisco Safe Gear Entry (SEA) helps safe distant entry to grid belongings supplying you with full management over which technician or contractor can remotely entry belongings for configuration, upkeep, or troubleshooting. It brings all the advantages of a zero-trust community entry (ZTNA) structure to distributed renewable vitality websites, so customers have entry solely to the units you select, utilizing solely the protocols you specify, and solely on the day and time you permit.
Safe your distributed vitality infrastructure with Cisco
In abstract, the Cisco SD-WAN answer coupled with Cisco Catalyst Industrial Routers and OT safety merchandise could be very related to renewable vitality networks and may help simplify deployment at scale whereas providing superior cybersecurity capabilities. Be taught extra about it within the answer overview we just lately printed. I’ve additionally mentioned it in additional particulars in a latest webinar, which now you can watch on-demand. We’ll be pleased that can assist you construct the safe SD-WAN infrastructure you’ve been ready for.
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