Networks have become the foundational backbone for the operational technology (OT) that underpins critical infrastructure including energy, transportation, and manufacturing. Organizations increasingly require real-time access into the data these systems hold to improve production, manage costs, and enhance safety metrics. Today, Cisco introduced an IoT security architecture that provides enhanced visibility across both IT and OT environments, and protects industrial processes. Cisco’s new solutions enable the collection and extraction of data from the IoT edge so organizations can increase efficiencies to make better business decisions and accelerate digitization projects.

“Organizations need complete visibility into the most disparate of network environments in order to secure their industrial edge, lower the risk of cyber threats, and optimize industrial processes” said Osama Al-Zoubi, Cisco CTO for Middle East and Africa.

Cisco’s new IoT security architecture innovations include:

• Securing the Industrial Network Environment: Cisco Cyber Vision is the first software-based security solution for automated discovery of industrial assets delivered via Cisco’s Industrial IoT (IIoT) networking portfolio. Cisco Cyber Vision analyzes traffic from connected assets, creates segmentation policies in Cisco ISE and DNA Center to prevent lateral movement of threats across the operational environments, and is powered by Cisco Talos’ threat intelligence, providing real-time monitoring of cyber security threats to industrial assets and processes that affect uptime, productivity, and safety.
• Data Governance from Edge to Multi-Cloud: Integrated with Cisco’s industrial networking, Cisco Edge Intelligence simplifies the extraction of data at the network edge. It streamlines the data delivery to multi-cloud and on-prem destinations to improve the competitiveness of an organization and helping businesses better manage data throughout critical aspects of its life cycle from start to finish.

Cisco has removed the complexity of a multi-vendor, multi-data, and multi-asset infrastructure to deliver simple IoT cyber security solutions that can be managed on any of Cisco’s gateways, switches, or routers, bringing end-to-end security and simplified data management together.

Additional Resources:

• Executive Blog: Read more about this announcement in Liz Centoni’s blog here.
• For more information about Cisco IoT click here.