Posters

Abstract

Utilities are considering the strategic advantages of modernizing their operational technology (OT) networks to drive business value. OT systems are rich with data that could be used to support simulations, incident response, and business decisions, but the networks they are connected to are often limited by the storage and compute power available onsite. An OT network is typically designed to run in a physically isolated and secured location, disconnected from the outside world to protect it from intrusion. What if you could use the cloud to extend your OT network without sacrificing isolation and security? By extending your OT network to the cloud and using cloud services from Amazon Web Services (AWS), you gain elasticity, scalability, and resilience that facilitate the efficient collection and analysis of valuable OT system data to drive business decisions and improve the reliability of your operations. The advantages of moving your plant SCADA to the cloud are: * Contingency Analysis and Planning: Run dynamic contingency simulations in OT environments using real system data to help identify, prevent, and prepare for potential reliability impacts * Incident Response: Store OT system backups for longer periods of time to use in the event of an operational issue or cyber event. Collect event logs from OT systems for correlation and analysis to identify and investigate operational and cyber events * Advanced Analytics: Perform better generation forecasting and predictive maintenance using powerful purpose built tools which are design to scale without operational overhead * OT Visibility: Apply modern security controls offered by the cloud to achieve visibility by design, OT security monitoring and automation The cloud can greatly reduce the amount of operations required to run, scale and maintain each plant required OT infrastructure. Many generation companies can see the opportunity but are reluctant to take actions due to Security and Latency concerns around moving such critical workloads to the cloud. In this talk we will explore which are the main architectures, strategies and tools available to achieve better security posture, reduce latency and achieve operational excellence by adopting the cloud.