Cisco rolled out an IoT security architecture today that it says provides visibility and security across IT and operational technology (OT) environments. The architecture uses existing IT security products and services including Cisco Talos’ threat intelligence as well as a new industrial IoT network security product called Cyber Vision and its Edge Intelligence data extraction tool.

The move marks Cisco’s “first-ever integrated IoT architecture,” said Joe Malenfant, director of IoT at Cisco. “The network has really expanded to the operational side of the business because of digitization.”

Cyber Vision anchors the IoT security architecture, and this product uses technology Cisco acquired when it bought a small IoT security startup based in Lyon, France, called Sentryo over the summer.

“They have been building a technology for the last five years that speaks all of the industrial protocols,” Malenfant said, adding that Cisco deployed this technology as software running on its industrial IoT networking platform. “We take this microservice, deploy it onto our networking infrastructure, and now we’re just adding the software onto the switch and it’s doing passive, deep packet inspection, and it’s also seeing what assets are out there.”

Cyber Vision automatically discovers devices connected to the network and it analyzes traffic from these connected IoT assets. For example, a programmable logic controller (PLC) should not have any east-west communication, which would allow a PLC to transfer data packets to another device.

“A PLC should never talk to another PLC,” Malenfant said. “When we see that a PLC is communicating with an engineer, that is perfectly normal. But if we see a PLC is talking with another PLC, that shouldn’t be happening. So we can create a group policy around that.”

For this piece, Cisco uses its traditional networking tools, creating security and segmentation policies in its Identity Services Engine (ISE) and its network management dashboard DNA Center. Segmentation prevents lateral movement of threats across the operational environment.

And it’s powered by Cisco Talos’ threat intelligence, which provides real-time threat monitoring. This, Malenfant said, ensures uptime, reliability, and safety of a company’s industrial assets and processes.

In addition to the IoT security architecture, Cisco also announced a new edge computing product that integrates with the industrial networking portfolio. “Edge Intelligence … it extracts the data from those edge devices,” Malenfant said. It then “creates logical flows from the edge into a multi-cloud environment,” which includes private, public, or third-party clouds, he added.

This makes it easier for companies to use all of this proprietary data being collected by edge devices to their advantage. In addition to simplifying data management, it also helps businesses improve their competitiveness, Malenfant said.

Cisco doesn’t have access to companies’ data, he added. “We’re not doing anything with the data — we’re not storing it — we’re Switzerland. We are just moving the data from point A to point B to maintain security and privacy.”