Telecom Lead Asia: Cisco has expanded services to help utilities enhance grid operations with greater levels of automation and security and changing regulatory requirements.
Cisco Connected Grid Security Architecture simplifies policy administration, strengthens security controls and gives business more flexibility and increased visibility into operations. It provides a layered security architecture and physical security solutions.
A converged security strategy is created across wired and wireless infrastructures where the communication network serves as a platform tool to detect, control, alert and mitigate against threats.
Context-aware policies are enforced across the entire utility infrastructure network to meet rapidly evolving regulatory requirements and correlate directly with potential threats and business rules.
Cisco Security Intelligence Operation (SIO) is used for real-time insight into the global threat environment for proactive notifications.
The physical security solutions integrates video surveillance, physical access control tools including card readers and sensor networks, for monitoring the status and location of assets and users.
Cisco Services for Grid Security assists utilities in defining security requirements, developing future-state grid security architectures, coordinating the deployment and integration of security solutions, and delivering ongoing optimization and managed services.
Cisco also extended its hardened network solutions for substations to allow utilities better visibility and management of the grid. The expanded Substation Solution helps bridge the gap that further transitions utilities to a fully IP-enabled grid. The solution includes Cisco 1000 Series Connected Grid Switches, Cisco Aggregation Service Router (ASR) 900 Series 14 port Sync/Async Interface Module, and Cisco Substation Automation Design and Implementation Guide.
Lionel Chocron, vice president and general manager of Cisco Connected Energy Networks business unit, said the company’s architectural approach via the GridBlocks reference model helps address top-of-mind utility concerns around security and automation.
“Cisco’s new offerings extend our end-to-end value proposition by delivering greater visibility and control of grid assets, particularly for mission critical, low latency communications. These solutions improve grid state awareness and ultimately reduce cost of ownership from managing multiple networks,” Chocron added.
