SAN JOSE, Calif., July 24, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Cisco unveiled new solutions that make it easier for customers to better support risk management and compliance for industrial control environments and connect experts for mission critical communications and collaboration. As the Internet of Everything (IoE) is enabling new business processes and operational workflows across vertical industries, this increasing complexity requires greater collaboration as well as more robust and secure solutions to protect against evolving threats. To address these issues for both business and operational leaders, Cisco is announcing Cisco Collaborative Operations and Cisco Secure Ops Solutions. These new solutions provide more visibility into their business and positively impact the bottom line by protecting against risks, improving efficiency and lowering site downtime.
In addition to the process manufacturing industries (such as Oil & Gas, Mining), these solutions are relevant across all industries including manufacturing, transportation, utilities, healthcare, and public sector.
Key Highlights
Cisco Secure Ops Solution
- Supports risk management and compliance for industrial control environments. It addresses risks using a combination of people, process and technology.
- Provides the framework for a wide range of industry partners and technology providers including Rockwell, Yokogawa Electric, McAfee and Symantec, among others.
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Is comprised of tightly integrated Cisco and third party products and services.
- It is designed to be "dropped in" to brownfield or greenfield environments and delivers unparalleled capabilities and security control mechanisms.
- The integration extends into commercial arrangements with automation suppliers for services like qualified patch lists and critical updates.
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Secure Ops benefits businesses across multiple functions:
- Business leaders gain situational awareness for security maturity and compliance within various parts of the business.
- Site leadership and management benefit from reduced management complexity and increased consistency across individual sites, leading to optimized operational costs.
- Site technical leaders are provided with a technical solution to help manage security and compliance on a per-site basis as well as valuable tools to increase it through standardized interfaces and capabilities
- Corporate risk and compliance leaders receive near real time information on operational risks associated with threats and adherence to compliance policies.
Cisco Collaborative Operations Solution
- Collaborative Operations is a collaborative portal that combines voice, video and data collaboration in a single, secure view.
- The collaborative portal is designed for operations personnel working in distributed networks and lets remote experts help guide operations in real-time, afford greater reach per expert resource and minimize miscommunication driving faster, better decision making.
- Technologies include: Cisco Video Surveillance Manager; Cisco IPICS; landline; mobile; two-way radios and remote speaker integration; chat functionality; WebEx and multiple application sharing into an Operations Environment over an optimized, secure network. The ability to include analytics also enables proactive monitoring of operations, creating an opportunity to anticipate issues and react faster when they arise.
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Benefits:
- Businesses can proactively monitor operations and reduce operations downtime.
- Platform enables communication between stakeholders at all times. Remote Experts can be instantly connected with on-site personnel using voice, video or data.
- Solution creates opportunities for workforce development and training, safety improvements, and risk mitigation
Supporting Quotes
Matt Fordenwalt, Business Manager, Customer Support & Maintenance, Rockwell Automation:
Rockwell Automation is working with Cisco on a variety of IoE solutions in industries like Manufacturing and Energy, and we are very pleased to join Cisco as they bring the Secure Ops solution to these key IoE industry verticals across the globe. The emerging trend of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) working together is driving the need for Cisco and Rockwell Automation to combine expertise across these functions to help design, manage risk and maintain compliance of a secure network infrastructure throughout your connected enterprise.
Chiaki Itoh, Vice President, Industrial Automation Marketing Headquarters, Yokogawa Electric Corporation:
Our industrial automation customers around the world have been facing a wide range of security and operational challenges as they continually work in a dynamically changing business and technology environment to increase the reliability of their plant operations, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), and achieve sustainable business growth.
Yokogawa is a leading, global, one-stop provider of innovative IA solutions that utilize IoE technology to enhance security management, contribute to operational excellence through the reduction of TCO and other means, and ensure sustainable business growth.
Yokogawa is very happy to be collaborating with Cisco on its Secure Ops initiative, and views this as a platform for integrating Yokogawa IA and Cisco IoE best practices and innovations that will help global IA customers enhance security, achieve operational excellence, and improve agility.
Phil Rapatz, Director, IT Infrastructure and Operations, Halliburton
Halliburton recognizes that an integrated and intuitive end-to-end solution like Collaborative Operations is necessary to deliver our field-to-real-time operations center needs and add to our operational capabilities.
Greg Carter, Director/GM, Internet of Everything Services Group, Cisco
These solutions were designed to enable our customers to collaborate as well as provide a robust and secure solution to quickly address potential threats that come with the increase in connected people, processes and things with IoE. I'm thrilled that two of our valued partners are already seeing the benefits from these innovations and look forward to extending this solution to more customers across other verticals in the months ahead.
Supporting Resources:
Video: Improve Field Operations with Cisco Collaborative Operations Solution
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