Renewable vitality is a quickly rising section of the vitality business. Applied sciences akin to wind, photo voltaic, biomass, geothermal, and vitality storage at the moment are thought of mainstream. Nevertheless, all of those websites require safe connectivity to allow essential distant monitoring and management.
Renewable vitality corporations should join an array of renewable vitality property unfold throughout large geographic areas. Many renewable asset operators additionally use private and non-private cloud-based functions, 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 influence 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 know-how is accessible, simplifying administration of the infrastructure, providing seamless entry to functions wherever they’re hosted, delivering assurance for functions particularly for distant customers, and providing a really excessive degree of safety all through the community.
Most renewable vitality corporations as we speak are used to constructing giant networks using applied sciences akin to Web Protocol Safety (IPsec) and Dynamic Multipoint Digital Non-public 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 non-public mobile for distant websites with no different WAN connectivity.
SD-WAN brings these applied sciences collectively and allows automation to significantly simplify deployments and provide unmatched cybersecurity advantages out-of-the-box:
- Safe zero contact deployment of discipline gateways, that means no discipline employees is required to configure a gateway.
- Easy provisioning of service VPNs to segregate visitors (SCADA, CCTV, IP telephony, and so on.).
- Templated configurations making it simple to vary configuration and push it to gateways whereas guaranteeing compliance of all discipline property to licensed 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 non-public MPLS for important SCADA visitors and mobile for backup and even internet-based connections for non-critical visitors, the place applicable.
- Lifecycle administration of gateways, akin to firmware updates, alarm monitoring and statistics.
Simplifying connecting giant, 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 complicated routing plans based mostly on the underlying transport community, very often offered by a third-party service supplier. This divorces the underlying transport community from the overlay community. Therefore, it simplifies operational duties and supplies a safer overlay community for important monitoring and management visitors.
Wouldn’t or not it’s useful to have a single answer with a alternative of commercial ruggedized gateways for various website varieties? We expect so, and Cisco supplies a number of industrial routers to go well with all deployment websites and will 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 supply a single overlay community connecting to any website.
Unifying networking and cybersecurity
Cisco’s SD-WAN answer additionally supplies a broad set of cybersecurity options, simplifying coverage creation and deployment to the sting gateways. Superior safety capabilities akin to:
- Firewall with software consciousness (NGFW) to filter visitors in actual time and supply granular management able to detecting hundreds of functions.
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDS/IPS) with Talos® signatures to determine and block recognized threats and malicious actions akin to vulnerability exploits.
- Superior malware safety methods, 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 masking tens of millions 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 risk 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 website, Cisco supplies additional safety instruments that may be leveraged ‘excessive’ to extend the safety posture of the positioning:
- Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient provides asset house owners full visibility into gadgets linked to their industrial networks, communication patterns, vulnerabilities, and software flows to assist assess the OT safety posture. Renewable vitality corporations now have exact data to grasp their cyber dangers, implement safety greatest practices, and drive compliance with cybersecurity rules akin to NERC CIP or NIS2.
- Cisco Safe Gear Entry (SEA) helps safe distant entry to grid property providing you with full management over which technician or contractor can remotely entry property 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 gadgets 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 may be very related to renewable vitality networks and may help simplify deployment at scale whereas providing superior cybersecurity capabilities. Study extra about it within the answer overview we lately revealed. I’ve additionally mentioned it in additional particulars in a current webinar, which now you can watch on-demand. We’ll be completely satisfied that will help you construct the safe SD-WAN infrastructure you’ve been ready for.
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