Renewable power is a quickly rising phase of the power trade. Applied sciences equivalent to wind, photo voltaic, biomass, geothermal, and power storage at the moment are thought of mainstream. Nonetheless, all of those websites require safe connectivity to allow essential distant monitoring and management.
Renewable power corporations should join an array of renewable power 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 power sources
Enterprises have extensively deployed Software program Outlined WAN (SD-WAN) over the previous 10 years to handle related necessities: connecting distant websites utilizing whichever networking know-how is obtainable, 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 power corporations right now are used to constructing massive networks using applied sciences equivalent to Web Protocol Safety (IPsec) and Dynamic Multipoint Digital Personal Community (DMVPN) to encrypt important Supervisory Management and Knowledge 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 enormously simplify deployments and provide unmatched cybersecurity advantages out-of-the-box:
- Safe zero contact deployment of subject gateways, which means no subject employees is required to configure a gateway.
- Easy provisioning of service VPNs to segregate site visitors (SCADA, CCTV, IP telephony, and so on.).
- Templated configurations making it straightforward to alter configuration and push it to gateways whereas making certain compliance of all subject belongings to licensed templates.
- Software of unified safety insurance policies throughout a various vary of distant websites and tools.
- Managing a number of backhaul connectivity choices on the gateway together with personal MPLS for important SCADA site visitors and mobile for backup and even internet-based connections for non-critical site visitors, the place applicable.
- Lifecycle administration of gateways, equivalent to firmware updates, alarm monitoring and statistics.
Simplifying connecting massive, distributed infrastructures
Deploying an SD-WAN overlay additionally permits the renewable power firm to regulate the end-to-end IP addressing schemes and take away the necessity to engineer complicated routing plans primarily based 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 important monitoring and management site visitors.
Wouldn’t or not it’s helpful to have a single resolution with a selection of business 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 resolution.
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 places and different operational websites to offer a single overlay community connecting to any web site.
Unifying networking and cybersecurity
Cisco’s SD-WAN resolution additionally offers a broad set of cybersecurity options, simplifying coverage creation and deployment to the sting gateways. Superior safety capabilities equivalent to:
- Firewall with software consciousness (NGFW) to filter site 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 equivalent 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 primarily based on greater than 80 internet classes overlaying thousands and thousands of domains and billions of webpages.
- Safe entry to cloud and web sources with Cisco Umbrella® which mixes safe internet gateway, DNS safety, cloud-delivered firewall, cloud entry safety dealer performance, and risk intelligence to guard towards web threats.
Managing cyber dangers to drive regulatory compliance
Additional to securing the perimeter and connectivity to the renewable power 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 homeowners full visibility into gadgets related to their industrial networks, communication patterns, vulnerabilities, and software flows to assist assess the OT safety posture. Renewable power corporations now have exact data to know their cyber dangers, implement safety finest practices, and drive compliance with cybersecurity laws equivalent to NERC CIP or NIS2.
- Cisco Safe Tools 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 power websites, so customers have entry solely to the gadgets you select, utilizing solely the protocols you specify, and solely on the day and time you permit.
Safe your distributed power infrastructure with Cisco
In abstract, the Cisco SD-WAN resolution coupled with Cisco Catalyst Industrial Routers and OT safety merchandise may be very related to renewable power networks and might help simplify deployment at scale whereas providing superior cybersecurity capabilities. Study extra about it within the resolution overview we not too long ago printed. I’ve additionally mentioned it in additional particulars in a current 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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