We are delighted to have Steve Bowles, Director Cyber and Physical Security at 360 Network Solutions as visitor blogger on our channel.
Gwinnett County has been one of many quickest rising counties in America for many years. Business is booming all through the larger Atlanta space, which incorporates the northeast area that makes up Gwinnett County. With the advantages of development are the challenges of site visitors, and that’s the place the County’s Department of Transportation (DOT) is available in.
The complexities of connectivity
The Gwinnett County DOT understands the significance of site visitors administration to the County because it takes care of roads, sidewalks, bridges, and site visitors indicators. The ITS community helps carry effectivity to the transportation infrastructure and we at 360ns work with the DOT to deploy know-how and options for proactive administration. Working proactively includes anticipating and correcting points earlier than they’ve an opportunity to occur.
When the DOT waits for a name a couple of site visitors sign drawback, it might be an hour or fairly a number of hours earlier than a name is acquired. It’s widespread for drivers to imagine another person known as in to report it already.
With digitizing and automation, an computerized notification goes by means of the community and alerts technicians, who can shortly reply. This digitization is a journey that Gwinnett County DOT has already begun. First, the DOT will standardize connectivity to all site visitors indicators. This integration will assist enhance community uptime and put the groundwork in place for an clever transportation system within the not-so-distant future.
Establishing constant connectivity
Part of this long-term planning included a community improve with the longer term in thoughts. The County’s core workplace enterprise community is unbiased from the DOT community, and it turned clear that selecting uniform community requirements could be essential to simplify administration and harden safety. Cisco enterprise networking has lengthy been the spine of the IT infrastructure. Working in related community environments would assist make integrating IT and Operational Technology OT networks simple.
Standardizing with Cisco know-how established one household of Cisco switches and routers. At the identical time, 4 community integrators had been consolidated into one. The community improve for Gwinnett County DOT is constructed on Cisco Industrial Ethernet switches—such because the IE4000 and IE4010—which offer each layer 2 entry connectivity in addition to layer 3 aggregation. Gwinnett County IT-approved configuration templates are deployed by DOT groups utilizing Cisco DNA Center. This allows operators to simply provision, configure, monitor, and diagnose the community remotely. Gwinnett County IT then manages layer 3, whereas the DOT manages layer 2 switches.
Enterprise grade safety safety is significant for native authorities and Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers endpoint authentication, authorization, and accounting in community entry management for community segmentation and safe operations. An permitted administrator connecting to a swap could be authenticated by means of ISE and licensed to make modifications whereas creating an audit path for record-keeping functions.
Further forward, further enhancements will handle bodily entry throughout Gwinnett DOT layer 3 subject hub cupboards utilizing the 360ns SmartLock 8000. Developed by 360 Network Solutions for transportation businesses, the SmartLock 8000 permits bodily safety insurance policies to be enforced in actual time with card entry management and distinctive safe mechanical keys. Access can be managed by way of a 360ns net interface entry management dashboard that’s accessible by means of the County community.
Open roads, open doorways
Managing street infrastructure has some similarities with managing IT: individuals solely discover when one thing goes incorrect. And for Gwinnett County, the street is clean. The Cisco setting additionally opens the door to future areas similar to good signage, linked automobile, Transit Signal Priority (TSP) for public transportation, and Emergency Vehicle Preemption (EVP) for police, fireplace, and emergency companies.
The meant consequence for Gwinnett County guests and residents is clean flowing site visitors. Will they discover? When these site visitors lights are inexperienced and journey instances are shorter, I do know it brings me an enormous smile, like I gained the prize. And possibly that’s the most effective final result of all.
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