We’re thrilled to announce that Cisco’s unified OT safety and networking structure is called “Good Manufacturing Resolution of the Yr” within the 2024 IoT Breakthrough Awards.
Industrial safety generally is a advanced enterprise, and but OT safety is quintessential for contemporary Industrial IoT (IIoT) operations. IIoT methods typically include a wide range of interconnected methods and applied sciences, every with its personal safety wants. A few of these are older and never designed with fashionable safety threats in thoughts. Moreover, OT groups, with their restricted assets, might not be capable of dedicate satisfactory time and personnel to safety, and IT groups typically don’t perceive operations effectively sufficient. Potential manufacturing losses ensuing from elevated safety measures also can generally battle with the necessity to deal with safety considerations.
OT safety has, subsequently, historically been an afterthought and constructed utilizing a piecemeal method, counting on a patchwork of options supplied by completely different distributors, every designed to offer solely a single safety operate. Prospects are pressured to deploy level options that result in pointless {hardware} deluge, elevated complexity, and an general safety resolution that doesn’t scale or ship.
An built-in community and safety structure
At Cisco we take a less complicated, scalable, and simpler method by integrating safety capabilities immediately into the community material. Our improvements allow the commercial community to switch the numerous one-function level merchandise.
Determine 1: Cisco industrial switches and routers combine safety capabilities and assist get rid of many separate merchandise
With a unified industrial safety and networking structure, Cisco brings simplicity and scale to each join and shield operations. It reduces complexity by delivering visibility, segmentation, distant entry, and different safety companies on Cisco industrial switches and routers with out the necessity to introduce extra {hardware}.
- Visibility into linked belongings, community visitors, and assessing present asset vulnerabilities is acknowledged as step one in securing operations. Conventional safety distributors present a deep packet inspection (DPI) server for this goal to which it is advisable to span visitors out of your change ports, including to the community complexity and prices. Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient runs inside Cisco industrial units and performs the identical capabilities with out the additional server, issues, and expense.
- The second step as soon as visibility is established is to partition your industrial community into smaller segments to include any malware that will discover its approach inside, however in a approach that enables reputable visitors to movement unhindered. Historically, this community segmentation has been completed with units of firewalls or Entry Management Lists (ACL) configuration in switches. Each are both costly, tough to get proper and keep, or each. Native capabilities in Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switches permit dynamic and automatic a number of ranges of segmentation with out the firewalls or handbook ACLs.
Determine 2: Cisco industrial gear runs Cyber Imaginative and prescient for visibility and segmentation insurance policies
- A 3rd necessity is to allow operations personnel to securely entry industrial belongings remotely. Historically, organizations have trusted options like VPNs that require frequent handbook updates to firewall guidelines and soar server settings, doubtlessly unsecure strategies equivalent to mobile gateways, to call just a few. With the Safe Tools Entry resolution, Cisco industrial community gear allows safe zero-trust community entry (ZTNA) by embedding ZTNA gateway performance with out the necessity for further servers. Enabling distant entry is now only a software program characteristic to activate in your Cisco industrial community.
Determine 3: Cisco industrial networking hosts a ZTNA gateway for safe distant entry
Put the award-winning resolution to give you the results you want
We’ve got not solely designed an award-winning structure, however we have now additionally made it simple so that you can undertake it, assembly you in your safety journey the place you’re and guiding you progressively to the place you need to be. Our four-step course of can lead you from constructing a strong safety basis, by means of visibility, distant entry, and segmentation to incident reporting and response.
Determine 4: Cisco four-step journey for industrial safety
The community embedded safety structure scales throughout all OT use instances like manufacturing, transportation, utilities, oil & fuel, renewable energy technology, and mining amongst others.
We’re grateful to the IoT Breakthrough Award judges for recognizing the advantages of our built-in safety and networking structure.
For extra particulars and to find what’s attainable, please confer with the whitepaper, Harness the Energy of Networking to Safe Industrial Operations, or arrange a free no-obligation seek the advice of with one in every of our consultants.
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