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Digitizing Substation Automation
ScottishPower Case Study
Forrester Wave Leader
Contact iotgds@cisco.com to find out more
The Cisco Substation Automation solution aims to help utilities modernize their grid operations by addressing various challenges they face. These challenges include handling sustainable and distributed energy sources, environmental impacts, evolving business models, retiring workforce, expanding electrical capacity, and cybersecurity risks. The solution offers a range of features to support new business models, regulatory requirements, capacity expansion, integration of renewable energy sources, cost reduction, and risk mitigation. It includes infrastructure upgrades, network management capabilities, and enhanced grid security. The key additions to the solution include new industrial switches and routers that support secure and reliable communication, higher performance, and smaller footprints. The solution also incorporates network management options such as Cisco DNA Center and vManage
for automated and scalable network management. Additionally, the solution enhances grid security with features like MACsec support. Overall, the Substation Automation solution helps improve grid reliability, support sustainable energy sources, reduce operational costs, manage power quality, protect critical assets, meet regulatory compliance, and enhance security.
Secure and resilient connectivity for process and station bus equipment in primary substations
Support for connectivity of secondary substation and multiservice networks
Automated and proactive network management
Visibility of substation end devices and communications
WAN interconnectivity via cellular, MPLS, or SD-WAN
Secure remote access to production assets
Availability of Industrial Automation and Control System (IACS) devices and data for IoT applications
Cisco is committed to providing a holistic substation automation solution that implements a scalable, secure, and resilientmultiservice-enabled network. Solution releases continue to address evolving, real life customer deployment scenarios.
ScottishPower Renewables collaborated with Cisco to produce the Cisco Validated Designs for offshore wind farm projects. To confirm that the design supported the needs of stakeholders, Cisco gathered requirements from offshore wind farm operators and wind turbine manufacturers; Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractors; Telecom Systems Integrators (TSI); and other Cisco partners that provide offshore services. Support from the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) helped develop a robust, resiliency-focused solution to improve network reliability and availability. The comprehensive, hardened, and secure technology stack thoroughly covers the elements of communications for wind farm operations and maintenance.
ScottishPower Renewables can rest confidently knowing that the Cisco Validated Design minimizes security risks by adopting the zero-trust principles found within the International Society of Automation (ISA)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 62443 series of cybersecurity standards for industrial automation and control systems (IACS). Solutions described in the Cisco Validated Design can also assist with regulatory compliance by providing detailed visibility into operational technology assets and their communications, helping to detect and remediate threats as well as reporting them as mandated by the European Union and United Kingdom with the Network and Information Security Directive (NIS).
Original Blog Written by Ruben Lobo
Leading research firm, Forrester, recognized Cisco Industrial Threat Defense as a Leader in its analysis of ICS (Industrial Control Systems) security solutions.
Cisco, known for its expertise in enterprise cybersecurity and networking, has been supporting industrial organizations in digitizing their operations for over 15 years.
Industrial Threat Defense stands out as a comprehensive, pre-integrated industrial cybersecurity solution, offering visibility into industrial assets, macro-segmentation and micro-segmentation to isolate and protect networks, endpoint detection and response (EDR), secure remote access, threat intelligence and incident response services, and extended detection and response (XDR) for threat investigation and remediation.
Industrial Threat Defense is unique in its ability to seamlessly integrate all these components, simplifying the security infrastructure for organizations that often have numerous cybersecurity tools in place.
Cisco embraces an open ecosystem, allowing organizations to incorporate existing solutions from other vendors into the Industrial Threat Defense framework. Cisco's commitment to industrial digitization and deep understanding of operational technology requirements position them as a trusted partner in securing industrial operations.
