Over the previous 20 years, I’ve loved the journey I’ve taken with industrial clients as companions, serving to them modernize and safe their infrastructures. As expertise enters the age of AI and clients prepared themselves for superior expertise, I really feel energized by the chance to assist them meet the challenges they’re dealing with as they appear to digitize and shield their networks at scale.
Our clients really feel an urgency to make sure their networks are securely maintained, and I regularly hear from them that it’s their prime concern. Cisco is dedicated to securing clients’ 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 sequence of internationally acknowledged requirements that particularly handle the cybersecurity challenges confronted by Industrial Automation and Management Methods (IACS). That is vital for industries like manufacturing, vitality, and transportation. Half 4-1 of the IEC 62443 commonplace outlines particular necessities for the safe growth of merchandise that make up an IACS. Which means firms who develop the tools should show how they meet stringent secure-by-design necessities. Half 4-2 specifies the safety capabilities required for a chunk of apparatus to be built-in into an industrial community.
As a producer, the commercial community you put money into will form your skill to compete and achieve in the present day’s industrial panorama, so if you’re connecting your multi-million-dollar manufacturing machines with out a lot consideration for networking tools, 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 tools is strategic
Driving long-term effectivity and productiveness requires that you just take into account the continuing affect of the commercial switches, routers, and entry factors in your operations and the way they are going to talk between machines and management methods. Your wants will evolve, so choosing scalable, versatile parts gives you room for future development and simple integration into your community. And given how weak industrial operations have gotten to cyberattacks, selecting tools with sturdy security measures that adjust to strict cybersecurity laws (such because the NIS2 Directive throughout Europe) is integral to defending delicate information and important infrastructure. However how are you going to assess whether or not the tools you’re deploying is safe sufficient to safeguard your operations and compliant with laws?
ISA/IEC 62443 gives a rubric for assessing tools safety
The ISA/IEC 62443 industrial cybersecurity commonplace defines necessities that industrial parts should meet to be thought of safe. As a result of this commonplace is a neighborhood 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 observe the strict Cisco Safe Growth 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 implies that all Cisco merchandise are 4-1 compliant. This underscores our dedication to serving to clients construct safe, protected industrial networks.
When Cisco Industrial Ethernet switches are ISA/IEC 62443-4-2 licensed, it implies that their safety in-depth design complies with rigorous necessities. They observe Cisco’s iterative course of to determine and mitigate dangers to make switches as safe as attainable. 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 tools, patrons might have a troublesome time evaluating apples to apples. ISA/IEC 62443 is a gold commonplace metric for comparability. With Cisco’s total portfolio of commercial switches now licensed for each ISA/IEC 62443-4-1 and 4-2, we’re making it straightforward so that you can standardize on a single complete household of entry, aggregation, and distribution switches that addresses all of your use instances.
In fact, it’s worthwhile to be certain that regardless of all of your precautions you don’t inadvertently permit 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 skim why Forrester has named Cisco a pacesetter in OT cybersecurity for 2024, or guide a free, zero-commitment one-on-one session with a Cisco cybersecurity professional and get an indication.
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