Melbourne Water protects IT and industrial networks from cyber threats

Melbourne Water turned to DXC Connect, a subsidiary of DXC Technology, for a multimillion-dollar security upgrade to protect the utility’s IT and operational technology (OT) networks from the risk of cyber-attack.

Challenge

A supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) review had recommended that Melbourne Water segregate its corporate and industrial networks. The utility turned to DXC Connect to help “protect it against modern-day threats”.

The security and network architectures required security enforcement and general protection while accommodating the productivity needs of mobile and office workers, who required scalable and safe access to cloud services.

Melbourne Water had gone to market to implement the required enhancements while following the established roadmap set out by the Enterprise Architecture (EA) team targeting specific business outcomes. The decision to select the least risk option was based on overall design, approach, and implementation timeframe.

Solution

Connect isolated and protected SCADA, plant control system, office automation, network management, surveillance, and guest services traffic across the network. It also implemented quality of service and class of service to protect SCADA and closed circuit television network traffic.

Best-practice security controls were put in place to protect the network foundation in accordance with Cisco’s SAFE guidelines, aligned with ISO standards and NIST best practices. This addressed the needs for risk mitigation and enabled flexibility with any modifications required to support the realisation of Melbourne Water’s enterprise architecture infrastructure roadmap.

Migration activities included multiple critical business systems with intra-system and end-user mobility integration points. The migration required the distribution of new user credentials for access to the new domain, which required careful coordination/distribution of updated access processes across sites, to ensure business activities continued to functional as usual.

Melbourne Water senior project manager Shane Drieberg said: “The key business driver for this project was improved security and increased organisational capability. By Connect thinking outside the square and improving on our original high-level designs, innovative new technology was used to exceed the minimum requirements and position Melbourne water to take better advantage of existing systems.”

Results

The business impact delivered through the project resulted in a substantial uplift to Melbourne Water’s security posture, both internally and when facing the ever-increasing external challenges of keeping data and critical infrastructure safe in the future.

This foundational security uplift provided Melbourne Water with a best practice network security solution that not only addresses current needs, including risk mitigation, but provide new capability to flex with any modification required to support the realisation of Melbourne Water’s Enterprise Architecture infrastructure roadmap as per today’s vision and into the future as the vision evolves.

“The most difficult constraint on the project was time. We had a hard deadline of 31 December 2016. The project delivered the desired outcomes two weeks ahead of time,” said Drieberg.

“Connect worked well with Melbourne Water and other suppliers to deliver a holistic solution. Delivery had to be completed by 31 December and failure was definitely not an option. When it came to crunch time, Connect pulled all stops to ensure that the solution was delivered on time, to the highest quality standard.”

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