Over the previous 20 years, I’ve loved the journey I’ve taken with industrial prospects as companions, serving to them modernize and safe their infrastructures. As know-how enters the age of AI and prospects prepared themselves for superior know-how, I really feel energized by the chance to assist them meet the challenges they’re dealing with as they give the impression of being to digitize and defend their networks at scale.
Our prospects really feel an urgency to make sure their networks are securely maintained, and I often hear from them that it’s their high concern. Cisco is dedicated to securing prospects’ operations, which is why I’m happy to announce that our full Industrial Ethernet portfolio of DIN rail, rackmount, and IP67-rated switches is now each IEC 62443-4-1 and 4-2 licensed.
That is excellent news for purchasers, as a result of it means our IE portfolio meets a strict collection of internationally acknowledged requirements that particularly tackle the cybersecurity challenges confronted by Industrial Automation and Management Techniques (IACS). That is important for industries like manufacturing, power, and transportation. Half 4-1 of the IEC 62443 normal outlines particular necessities for the safe improvement of merchandise that make up an IACS. Which means corporations who develop the gear should reveal how they meet stringent secure-by-design necessities. Half 4-2 specifies the safety capabilities required for a chunk of kit to be built-in into an industrial community.
As a producer, the economic community you spend money on will form your potential to compete and reach as we speak’s industrial panorama, so if you’re connecting your multi-million-dollar manufacturing machines with out a lot consideration for networking gear, you might be disillusioned when your community suffers a safety breach and allows you to down – and also you expertise a significant disruption in manufacturing.
The selection of commercial networking gear is strategic
Driving long-term effectivity and productiveness requires that you just contemplate the continuing influence of the economic switches, routers, and entry factors in your operations and the way they’ll talk between machines and management techniques. Your wants will evolve, so deciding on scalable, versatile elements provides you with room for future progress and simple integration into your community. And given how susceptible industrial operations have gotten to cyberattacks, selecting gear with strong safety features that adjust to strict cybersecurity rules (such because the NIS2 Directive throughout Europe) is integral to defending delicate information and demanding infrastructure. However how will you assess whether or not the gear you’re deploying is safe sufficient to safeguard your operations and compliant with rules?
ISA/IEC 62443 offers a rubric for assessing gear safety
The ISA/IEC 62443 industrial cybersecurity normal defines necessities that industrial elements should meet to be thought of safe. As a result of this normal is a group effort pushed by the Worldwide Society of Automation (ISA) and the Worldwide Electrotechnical Fee (IEC), it’s acknowledged globally as a blueprint for securing industrial infrastructures.
Cisco and ISA/IEC 62443-4 compliance
At Cisco, our networking merchandise comply with the strict Cisco Safe Improvement Lifecycle (CSDL) course of, which enforces a secure-by-design philosophy in all levels from product planning, working, monitoring, to end-of-life. The CSDL course of is licensed to adjust to ISA/IEC 62443-4-1 necessities, which signifies that all Cisco merchandise are 4-1 compliant. This underscores our dedication to serving to prospects construct safe, protected industrial networks.
When Cisco Industrial Ethernet switches are ISA/IEC 62443-4-2 licensed, it signifies that their safety in-depth design complies with rigorous necessities. They comply with Cisco’s iterative course of to determine and mitigate dangers to make switches as safe as doable. Merely put, our switches meet the strict standards for inclusion in a safe community.
For community patrons, the selection is safe
With all the alternatives within the market for industrial networking gear, patrons might have a troublesome time evaluating apples to apples. ISA/IEC 62443 is a gold normal metric for comparability. With Cisco’s complete portfolio of commercial switches now licensed for each ISA/IEC 62443-4-1 and 4-2, we’re making it simple so that you can standardize on a single complete household of entry, aggregation, and distribution switches that addresses all of your use circumstances.
After all, you’ll want to be certain that regardless of all of your precautions you don’t inadvertently enable vulnerabilities in your in any other case safe operations when putting in machine builder options. Put down ISA/IEC 62443-4 certification necessities in your RFP, and ensure your machine builder companions use Cisco Industrial Ethernet switches of their options.
Study extra about Cisco Industrial Ethernet switches, Cisco Industrial Risk Protection, and browse why Forrester has named Cisco a frontrunner in OT cybersecurity for 2024, or ebook a free, zero-commitment one-on-one session with a Cisco cybersecurity knowledgeable and get an illustration.
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