Recapping Cisco industrial IoT’s journey: A 12 months of safety, simplification and innovation

The top of the 12 months and the beginning of the following is all the time a time of retrospection and celebration. On this weblog, we’ll have a look again on the key subjects and developments that outlined the commercial IoT journey in 2023.

• Safety, safety, safety
• Theme of simplify IT for OT
• Sustainability
• New product improvements
• AI for industrial

Safety, safety, safety

Defending industrial operations from cyberthreats is important and all the time prime of thoughts. Empowering our industrial prospects to digitize and safe operations on the similar time has been prevalent in each dialog this 12 months. Because it connects all programs and gadgets, the community is clearly in the most effective place to allow a defense-in-depth strategy. Combining our deep experience in each industrial networking and cybersecurity, Cisco has empowered the community to safe operations:

• Offering visibility at scale: Cisco networking gear embed our Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient software program to supply visibility into OT asset inventories, vulnerabilities, and behaviors with out the necessity for extra home equipment or community assets. The Cisco community allows organizations to evaluate their OT safety posture and monitor cyber dangers from inner industrial assets.
• Containing threats: Segmenting industrial networks to stop threats from spreading and guarantee belongings can solely talk with the suitable assets they want has change into a lot less complicated and doesn’t require further safety home equipment. The Cisco industrial community advantages from Cisco ISE and Cyber Imaginative and prescient working collectively to implement ISA/IEC-62443 zones and conduits.
• Controlling safe distant entry: Distant entry to OT belongings is essential to run operations. Granting entry to exterior actors can introduce main dangers that should be managed. With Cisco Safe Tools Entry (SEA), Cisco has introduced the zero-trust community entry (ZTNA) structure to industrial operations to remove the drawbacks of VPN options and dangers of unmanaged mobile gateways. And since it’s constructed into Cisco industrial switches and routers, it’s quite simple to deploy at scale. Cisco SEA has been acknowledged in CRN 2023 Tech Innovators Awards.

Simplify IT for industrial networks

Simplification is a key theme at Cisco; ship simplicity and scale for IT and operations. We convey simplicity and scale by delivering OT providers corresponding to Cyber Imaginative and prescient and Safe Tools Entry from the cloud on the commercial community. Our cloud software program providers for OT ship on our imaginative and prescient of Cisco Cloud Networking to supply a easy and constant expertise throughout all Cisco platforms. For instance, single sign-on (SSO) makes it simpler to achieve entry and navigate throughout Cisco networking platforms. Widespread person interface and authentication strategies convey better consistency and ease of use for purchasers to study and use Cisco networking platforms securely.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a key enterprise precedence throughout industries, and digitization is empowering organizations to realize their targets. The trail to a extra sustainable future requires dependable connectivity and visibility into knowledge for higher management and administration of extremely distributed industrial belongings. To speed up the transition to scrub vitality, the grid operators require up to date digital infrastructure. We’re serving to our prospects join clear vitality sources corresponding to wind and photo voltaic farms and digitize the grid to speed up the vitality transition. See how we helped ScottishPower Renewables.

New product improvements

Cisco’s dedication to innovation constantly retains us targeted on what’s forward for industrial networking. We introduced improvements to convey extra enterprise grade capabilities to the commercial edge.

Cloud-delivered OT providers to safe industrial networks at scale: Our industrial prospects ceaselessly inform us they typically lack expert assets to safe operations at scale. They want options they’ll simply deploy and function, particularly within the case of extremely distributed websites corresponding to roadways or renewable vitality manufacturing. In 2023, Cisco has made Cyber Imaginative and prescient obtainable as a cloud-based service to assist simply achieve visibility on OT asset inventories and their safety posture. Cisco Safe Tools Entry simplifies managing distant entry by centralizing coverage configuration and enforcement in a cloud-based service that OT directors can use.

Increasing community connectivity decisions for industrial use instances:

Bottomline, we’re serving to our prospects leverage the commercial community as a platform for innovation to make sure safe operations and unlock extra worth by enabling entry to operational gadgets and knowledge.

It’s not simply what’s forward however we additionally appeared again at what we’ve achieved. We celebrated a key milestone with 25 years of business switching anniversary.

Industrial AI

The AI matter is prime of thoughts for the commercial buyer. Industrial AI can unlock exceptional worth for organizations and is seen as a key enabler for bettering effectivity, decreasing prices, enhancing safety and many others. It may assist additional improve IT and OT collaboration. Now industrial AI fashions require giant quantities of business knowledge to coach its algorithms. Additionally, as soon as the mannequin is skilled, assortment and transmission of knowledge wants dependable, safe, excessive bandwidth, low latency connectivity. Therefore for it to work successfully, you want a community that’s prepared for these calls for. Cisco helps organizations allow their AI use instances at scale by offering better of breed community and safety.

Closing ideas

As we transfer into 2024, we promise to proceed pushing the boundaries driving digital transformation and shaping the way forward for industrial networks. Watch this weblog channel as we proceed to evolve our portfolio and convey the longer term to you. We stay up for seeing a few of you at Cisco Stay EMEA. To dive deeper into technical subjects at Cisco Stay, observe our industrial IoT studying maps.

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