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 is usually a complicated endeavor, and but OT safety is quintessential for contemporary Industrial IoT (IIoT) operations. IIoT programs typically include a wide range of interconnected programs 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 sufficient time and personnel to safety, and IT groups typically don’t perceive operations nicely sufficient. Potential manufacturing losses ensuing from elevated safety measures may generally battle with the necessity to deal with safety considerations.

OT safety has, subsequently, historically been an afterthought and constructed utilizing a piecemeal strategy, counting on a patchwork of options offered by completely different distributors, every designed to offer solely a single safety perform. Clients are pressured to deploy level options that result in pointless {hardware} deluge, elevated complexity, and an total safety resolution that doesn’t scale or ship.

An built-in community and safety structure

At Cisco we take an easier, scalable, and simpler strategy by integrating safety capabilities instantly into the community material. Our improvements allow the commercial community to exchange the numerous one-function level merchandise.

Determine 1: Cisco industrial switches and routers combine safety capabilities and assist eradicate many separate merchandise

With a unified industrial safety and networking structure, Cisco brings simplicity and scale to each join and defend operations. It reduces complexity by delivering visibility, segmentation, distant entry, and different safety providers on Cisco industrial switches and routers with out the necessity to introduce further {hardware}.

1. Visibility into linked belongings, community site visitors, and assessing current vulnerabilities is acknowledged as step one in securing operations. Conventional safety distributors present a deep packet inspection (DPI) server for this function to which it is advisable to span site visitors out of your change ports, including to the community complexity and prices. Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient runs inside Cisco industrial gadgets and performs the identical capabilities with out the additional server, issues, and expense.

2. The second step as soon as visibility is established is to partition your operations into smaller divisions to include any malware which will discover its approach inside, however in a approach that enables respectable site visitors to move unhindered. Historically, this community segmentation has been achieved 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 enable dynamic and automatic a number of ranges of segmentation with out the firewalls or guide ACLs.

Determine 2: Cisco industrial gear runs Cyber Imaginative and prescient for visibility and segmentation insurance policies

3. A 3rd necessity is to allow operations personnel to securely entry industrial belongings remotely. Historically, organizations have relied on options like VPNs that require frequent guide updates to firewall guidelines and bounce server settings, doubtlessly unsecure strategies resembling mobile gateways, to call just a few. With the Safe Tools Entry resolution, Cisco industrial community gear permits 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 be just right for you

We now have not solely designed an award-winning structure, however now we have additionally made it simple so that you can undertake it, assembly you in your safety journey the place you might be and guiding you step by step to the place you need to be. Our four-step course of can lead you from constructing a strong safety basis, by way 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 & gasoline, 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 doable, please seek advice from the whitepaper, Harness the Energy of Networking to Safe Industrial Operations, or arrange a free no-obligation seek the advice of with considered one of our specialists.

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