power
Today's utility marketplace places increasing demands on monitoring and control of critical assets. In a deregulated market power generators must now be more flexible and responsive to performance based rate contracts, rather than producing to predictable base loading. Power, gas and even telecommunications companies are merging to become convergent energy and utility companies, increasing the diversity of assets and systems.
As operators continue to embrace technology to lower cost structures and improve efficiency, it is important to understand the need to identify and reduce network security risks. Many companies have implemented Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) as a way to increase competitive advantage. Corporate IT networks, Business Applications and Operational systems (SCADA and Process Control) are converging. Accompanying the convergence of this infrastructure is increased security threat within the operational environments.
The SCADA and Process Control Security threat must be evaluated based upon the need to protect existing systems or future system installations. With the industrial expansion in the 80's & 90's many of the existing legacy installations were not designed with security for our connected world. Driven by the desire for system interoperability and real-time operational intelligence these legacy systems have become much more integrated with corporate IT networks and business applications.
Maintaining high availability and reliability of these business critical systems is essential. Careful consideration should be given to the unique nature of the environment (low network bandwidth, slower computer processing power, mission critical applications, un-patched operating systems) when developing your security solution.
Existing office IT approaches to securing SCADA and Process Control environments run the risk of adversely impacting system availability and reliability, as they were not designed to operate in this constrained, mission critical environment.
N2 can deliver solutions and products for operators to protect these critical systems.
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[Link to Vulnerability Assessment]
[Link to Security Training]
[Link to Critical Network Protection]
[Link to Incident Response]