Because we understand your concerns about protecting process performance and data, security is designed into our wireless offerings right from the start.

At the wireless field network level, robust security is provided through advanced, standards-based encryption as well as authentication, verification, key management, and anti-jamming techniques.

For example, our Smart Wireless solutions employ end-to-end 128-bit encryption using the Advanced Encryption Standard (NIST standard FIPS-197). For authentication purposes, each gateway maintains a "whitelist" of devices allowed to communicate with it, and individual devices accept messages only from a previously identified gateway or from other gateway-validated devices.

Separate Join and Network keys can be set to automatically rotate or be changed on demand. Implementation of the WirelessHART standard will add Session keys for communication between two network devices so that other devices can't "listen in." These can be rotated as well.

Message Integrity Codes are used to verify messages, both per-hop and end to end. Anti-jamming techniques such as Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) with channel hopping plus multi-path routing help sidestep noise sources, whether malicious or not. And gateway-to-host security leverages well-known standards such as SSL as well as complete encryption/authentication.

At the wireless plant network level, security is fundamental to the Cisco Unified Wireless Network. The standards-based Cisco Self-Defending Network solution provides confidence your plant and business data will remain private and secure. Threat-control capabilities control and contain known and unknown threats, and network admission control helps you enforce organizational security policies to allow only trusted end-point devices to access your network.

The Cisco Aironet 1520 Series wireless access points used in our plant-level networks are compliant with IEEE 802.11i and Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2), which employs hardware-based Advanced Encryption Standard encryption for wireless communication.