Cisco expanded its Catalyst 9000 switching portfolio into industrial edge today in a bid to modernize and secure critical infrastructures like utilities, roadways, railways, oil, and gas.

Based on Cisco’s own Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) ASIC silicon, the Catalyst Industrial Ethernet 9300 Series switches provide form factor built for rugged, industrial outdoor spaces, the vendor claims.

Existing customers now can use the Catalyst 9000 switch family across their entire enterprise with the same tools and skillsets, so no training is required for adopting the IE 9300 switches, Cisco VP and GM of IoT Vikas Butaney, explained in a blog post.

The switch also offers backplane stacking and centralized management, which enables customers to “stack up to eight switches and manage them as one,” he wrote.

Additionally, the switches run Cisco’s IOS-XE operating system, use DNA Center for management, and integrate with the vendor's Identity Services Engine for identity and access control, Cyber Vision for IoT security, and Endpoint Analytics for endpoint protection.

The integrations “bring visibility into industrial control systems and connected endpoints,” Butaney explained. 

Visibility is important for operational technology (OT) and IT teams to enable zero-trust architectures, he added. “All these new capabilities are designed to take the best of IT into operational settings to make businesses more secure and resilient, as well as accelerate digitization and automation.”

According to Cisco, the new switch is well suited for settings like roadways and tunnels. As toll plazas are being automated with IoT devices, those networks can use Catalyst IE9300 to aggregate traffic from multiple access switches and segment networks from multiple agencies for data protection, Butaney explained, adding that with the fiber interfaces, it also can transport traffic over long distances without amplification.

“Today, many industrial organizations have a high-risk profile with environments that are decades old and with little visibility into what is on their network and their communications patterns,” Butaney wrote. “With our new capabilities, they can quickly leverage their network to improve their security posture and decrease the risk profile for their business.”