‘CISCO’s technology will ensure uninterrupted digital services in smart cities’

The technology giant looks to bring end-to-end security solutions for smart cities with umbrella protection from any cyber attack

As we move into the technology driven interconnected world, where machine-to-machine communications is the new reality and where a ‘Smart City’ node can attack a peer group, J Vishak Raman, director, security business, Cisco, tells Ajay Kumar Shukla what it takes to prevent these attacks and how the tech giant plans to bring end-to-end security for new smart city projects. Excerpts:

What will be the role of technology in building modern smart cities and how it will impact common citizens?

Our technology will aim to make digital services uninterrupted for citizens. For example, land records, etc. Secondly, as we move into an interconnected world with Machine-to-Machine communications, where a smart city node can attack a peer group without even coming to the central node, Cisco works towards preventing these attacks, mitigating them, to provide uninterrupted, service availability. Our StealthWatch solutions plays huge role here.

How is your technology helpful in guarding smart cities from malware attack?

We are working with a number of smart cities in India, and each one of these has a security component in it, covering technologies such as IPS and NBAD. This ensures all the requests from the Smart City participants, such as computers or devices goes through our umbrella protection. For example, if your endpoint machine is infected with malware, it cuts off the communication to the internet.

What are the key initiatives Cisco plans to introduce in the smart city projects?

The Smart City projects we have won, have a solid security infrastructure. Our company has accessed a huge install base by offering consumers a look into the architectural journey and making them realize the need for endpoint technology protection. We have also set up a cyber range product in Bangladesh and are working with the Bangladesh Computer Council for this project. The project will assist the Bangladesh computer council in training their citizens on how they can improve their cyber security skills in a simulated environment. We are very proud of this project as it Cisco’s initiative to skill people in Bangladesh in ICT. So far in India we have trained more than 400 cyber security professionals from various sectors.

What is the use of the technology in Smart City traffic management?

The technology will provide the smart city with end-to-end security. Any interconnected device or an IP is hackable. A hacker can play around with a tracking management system, toll management system or a vehicle management. How do you make sure they don't intrude or hamper smart cities and day-to-day operations? This where Cisco is able to give a single dashboard or threat console to customers.

In smart cities, what kind of infrastructure do you require?

For smart city infrastructure, you need to have an interface that’s talks to the kinetic solution, which in turn talks to the industrial control system like traffic, lighting, waste management, smartphones, etc. All this gets interfaced into the Data center.

How challenging is working with a Smart City project and how do you plan to overcome the same?

The government sector has been one of the fastest growing businesses for us. The bigger deals predominantly coming from the government agencies, smart cities, etc. The Smart City infrastructure is like building the skeletons, where you add more applications to it. So the first phase of infrastructure security for a smart city - the monitoring and the management center, or the data center is to make sure it is secured. So how do they secure the data center which needs very high performance due to high traffic? It is through deploying an intrusion prevention system or IPS on to it. The second area is that, these data centers need to be tracked for what is normal behaviour and what is abnormal behaviour, such as data theft or a data exploration. So, our Network Behaviour Anomaly Detection or the NBAD does this for us.

Are you also working on automation for healthcare sector?

Yes. We are working with Narayana Health.

Are there any projects or verticals you want to be a part of?

We see a lot of scope in transportation and warehousing and these are big focus areas for us. Securing the ports and integrating them with IOT is key.

What does Cisco bring to the table in warehousing or transportation?

Our role is securing the ports and integrating them with their IoT sensors, real-time data feeds, logistics, transportation, monitoring systems, and securing it. Our job comes in when you put in this infrastructure, and making sure this doesn't go into wrong hands. Basically, our big focus is simplifying the security operations. How you detect a threat, investigate and take the remediation is key. What Cisco brings to the table is it simplifies - no more speeds and feeds, no more feature game. It's purely time to detect. If you have an attack, how quickly can detect and automate it.