Dulles, VA May 18, 2006 – Responding to a need among large utility companies to improve security of control and monitoring functions, Encore Networks announced today an environmentally hardened version of its proven BANDIT™ product optimized for utility applications and protocols. The BANDIT-III™ handles all variants of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) protocol, both bit- and byte-oriented, with strong encryption of all traffic and complete remote management capabilities after a simple "plug and play" installation. Hardened construction allows the BANDIT-III™ to operate over wide temperature ranges at remote sites without environmental control.
"We've seen utilities pushed by regulators and industry initiatives to improve security and availability of their internal networks at the same time that telecommunications carriers are making traditional analog transmission services more expensive," said Jack Stoddard, Encore Vice-President. "Utility operators face a double dose of change as they migrate a large installed base of legacy remote terminal units to more modern digital transmission services. The hardened BANDIT III™ is optimized for this situation.
"In addition, the BANDIT-III™ meets the emerging ROHS standard which places strict controls on pollutants including the elimination of lead in the manufacturing process. Already mandated by the European Union, ROHS has been adopted by both California and New York. Other states will soon follow.”
The standard Encore ELIOS™ operating software supports all versions of SCADA protocols over serial and Ethernet interfaces. One BANDIT-III™ connects up to six serial RTUs and multiple IP-capable RTUs at a site. Built-in control and management tools enable the BANDIT-III™ to operate under any SNMP-based network management system. Also standard in ELIOS™ is a quick failover from a primary to a backup connection. Users have complete freedom to configure any transmission service as primary and any as backup including Frame Relay, VSAT, cellular wireless, cable modem, DSL, dial-up and others.
Hardware acceleration of encryption ensures minimal latency or delay and supports up to 30 encrypted sessions (VPN tunnels). The other end of each tunnel may go to a different site and be dedicated to a different application to support network management, voice, and email as well as SCADA.
As a fully featured router, the BANDIT-III™ can also:
• Prioritize traffic according to policy rules of the user's choice.
• Operate as a firewall and apply access control by IP address.
• Translate private IP addresses to public addresses (Network Address Translation).
BANDIT-III™ offers a complete range of upstream connectivity to the network: 10/100 Ethernet, frame relay, cellular radio data link, leased line, and an integral V.90/V.92 modem. There are two slots for cellular radio modules, either of which may be GSM or CDMA. The two wireless connections can be provisioned on separate cellular networks for higher availability and wider geographic coverage. Cellular links may be the primary connection, the backup, or both.
Other interface options for the primary link are T-1/E-1 and 56 K with integral CSUs. A dual channelized T-1/E-1 interface includes drop and insert capability for additional flexibility in network design.
Mr. Stoddard continued, “By installing our rugged industrial grade BANDIT-III, utilities can now avoid the costly and disruptive ‘forklift’ change-out of equipment usually associated with the migration of legacy networks to IP VPN’s.”
The BANDIT-III™ is scheduled for general customer shipments during the late summer of 2006. |
