Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Anixter’s “The IP Connected Grid: The Future of the Intelligent Electric Power Network”  in Columbus, Ohio.  Here are my notes on the keynote address by Joe Weiss author of, “Protecting Industrial Control Systems from Electronic Threats”.  Mr. Weiss had the provocative and overall point that with the coming ’smart grid’ there is the convergence of IT security onto a electric power grid that in its current nature is void of security due to the power grids requirements to be reliable.   An added point is that our nation is in dire need of a particular skill set that is a blend of IT security know-how and power-grid expertise. Mr. Weiss commented that fewer that 100 people worldwide have this blend of skills because it draws from both IT and engineering backgrounds.

Here’s are my notes:

• Security has focused up until now on the end users and control systems.  Now that focus is shifting to the IT community.  Joe begins the presenation with the simple question, “What is a Smart Grid?”
  • • Multiple answers
      • AMI  (automated meter)
      • home automation
      • substation automation
      • plant automation

        What is common- two way communication – cyber!

• Mr. Weiss notes that not all power grid security incidences are malicious and he recounts the story of an engineer who using remote access login gained access to a private substation to update firmware. The update was not announced or known to the plant operators and the a firmware error in the update caused shutdown of entire operations of the plant. It was remote access, it was intentional, but it was not malicious.

• Mr. Weiss recounts another incident where corporate IT staff plugging an ethernet cable into SCADA network, which totally saturated the network and brought system down.  He tells these stories to remind IT network engineers that they are now apart of the electric grid process anytime IT interfaces with the power grid and the law of unintended consequences is very real, because the infrastructure was never designed for IT controls.

• Why Smart Grid
  • Customer “choice”
  • Minimize new infrastructure
  • improve grid reliability
  • improve safety
  • funding is available from stimulus
  • some or all the above

• A workflow the smart grid:  customer premise >> AMI meter > SCADA > utility substation > utility back office

• The problem that Mr. Weiss points out is that when you get to the industrial control, there is almost no security, such as the substation.  Why – reliability and safety.  Reliability and safety go almost opposite to security. We want our systems as open as possible, this is the opposite of security. How do we balance it?

Mr. Weiss spoke further on the needs for our nation to develop professionals who are competent in both IT security and with electric engineering. Since our current education system separates these two fields typically in separate colleges of Science and Engineering, it is difficult to develop skilled professionals with these fields and currently there are no U.S. education programs that have a program in place to educate future Smart Grid security engineers.

Erie Blue’s Mark McGinness and Jeff Tirey toured the colocation facility of Fidelity Voice and Data. Fidelity is a dedicated colocation hosting provider located in the Keith Building, which is one block west of the CSU campus on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland.  A unique strength to the Keith building is the multitude of carriers housed in the building.

A view of the Keith Building looking west. The Keith Building in downtown Cleveland is home to Fidelity Voice and Data.

The data center facility is complete with diesel backup power generator and a uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and multiple carriers coming into the data center.  The colocation facility has fixed floor with overhead wiring.  Power (A/C only) can easily be brought into a rack through their overhead bus power distribution.  What we like about the overhead style power bus is that Fidelity can provided metered and switchable power strips to each cabinet rapidly.   In terms of temperature coolness, the data center facility was easily the coolest facility we had ever toured. However, the tour was conducted on a January day in Cleveland, Ohio. That being said,    the colocation facility was still remarkably cooler than other facilities we have toured during winter months. There is ample rack space open for expansion and space is preserved in the colocation area for dedicated private cages.  Another interesting point about the data center is that it is located on the 7th floor of the Keith Building.  While the building has plenty of windows on every floor, the windows of the data center are secured with a hurricane proof barrier.  Floors and ceiling of the data center are concrete with walls of masonry.

There is much more information from our tour available upon request.  To better understand how this Cleveland colocation facility can meet your needs please contact Erie Blue immediately for consultation. As Fidelity Agent’s our Data Center Placement Service provides expert consultation free of charge.

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On January 15, 2010, Mark McGinness and Jeff Tirey of Erie Blue toured BlueBridge Networks data center facility which provides colocation and managed services.  This co-location facility is located in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio in the Sterling Building and it is one of a select few of Cleveland Datacenter Providers which offers a SAS-70 Certified colocation service.

BlueBridge Networks’  state-of-the-art colocation facility has 20,000 square feet of anti-static, raised-floor hosting.  BlueBridge Networks provides data center colocation services and managed data services, including disaster recovery, managed storage, and managed security, to companies throughout Northeastern Ohio and beyond.

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If your business is looking for Cleveland data center colocation or other data services, please contact Erie Blue to learn more about how BlueBridge Networks can help you.

On November 13, 2009 Mark McGinness and Jeff Tirey of Erie Blue toured Secure Data 365’s new Akron/Canton Ohio data center facility. The tour was led by Cory Finding.  You can see photos of our datacenter tour below.

Secure Data 365 is a 12,000 square foot raised floor data center facility located in Canton, Ohio on Hills and Dales Road. The data center has a convenient location which is just 10-minutes from the Akron/Canton International Airport and minutes from I-77. Secure Data 365 provides colocation, managed hosting, virtual computing services. You can learn more about this Canton Colocation facility here.

If your business requires Akron-Canton colocation or other data center services, please contact Erie Blue to learn more about this data center and its services.

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