Emerson cybersecurity collaboration benefits water companies

Automation experts Emerson have teamed up with Dragos – developer of the Dragos Platform for industrial cybersecurity asset detection, threat detection and response – to forge a global agreement that enables water companies to strengthen the security of their critical assets. PIF reports on their industrial cybersecurity solutions for the water and wastewater industry.

Threat detection technology

As part of this brand-new collaboration, Emerson will integrate threat detection technology from the Dragos Platform into its Ovation automation platform and Power and Water Cybersecurity Suite. Beyond this agreement, Emerson and Dragos will also be exploring additional areas of collaboration with regards to solutions used by Emerson power and water industry customers.

The Dragos Platform passively identifies assets and monitors network communications, giving customers greater visibility into their environments and insights into threats through intelligence-driven analytics. It also provides prescriptive guidance in the form of playbooks and other tools to help them investigate and respond to cyber incidents more effectively. This additional layer of protection complements Emerson’s robust portfolio of security offerings for industrial control systems in the power and water industries.

Emerson’s own Power and Water Cybersecurity Suite, Part of their Ovation Security Center, is designed for Ovation and non-Ovation users alike. This platform-independent, ICS cybersecurity solution helps DCS and SCADA system users in the power generation and water/wastewater industries to secure their critical assets without process disruption.

What is Emerson’s Ovation platform?

Emerson’s Ovation distributed control system (DCS) is a reliable and innovative platform that helps to improve plant reliability. In addition to native, advanced applications for optimising plant operations, Ovation supports integrated vibration monitoring, generator excitation control, SIS, scalable footprints for small or distributed applications, virtualisation and embedded simulation.

As well as its aforementioned industrial cybersecurity application, Ovation is tailor-made for water, wastewater and pumping applications. Within advanced water applications, the platform offers adaptive improvement solutions to help plants achieve optimised equipment performance for water quality, plant efficiency, and overall continuous operational improvement.

Meanwhile, their pump optimisation solution enables water and wastewater treatment processes to benefit from improved pump efficiency and lower electricity usage, while reducing pump wear and tear. The intuitive solution can be applied down to individual pumps up through pump stations and interceptor lift stations.

By leveraging OEM pump design data and control system process data, the software provides information to help understand how operations impact the reliability and efficiency of the pumps. Advanced algorithms can enable pumps to run as close to their best efficiency point, while predictive maintenance improves maintenance expenditure and minimises equipment burden.

Avoid unexpected disruptions

“We recognise the importance of continuously enhancing our security capabilities to address the shifting cybersecurity landscape,” said Bob Yeager, president of Emerson’s power and water business. “This collaboration is the latest example of Emerson’s ongoing commitment to helping our customers provide services that are so critical to the public wellbeing.”

“With Dragos’ purpose-built platform for the industrial environment and Emerson’s automation expertise, we’re able to help power producers and water utilities effectively detect and respond to evolving threats and avoid unexpected disruptions to their operations,” said Robert M. Lee, founder and CEO of Dragos.

For more information about Emerson’s Ovation automation platform, visit Emerson.com/ovation. To find out more about Dragos, visit Dragos.com.