Energy Provider – Highest security demands require a comprehensive system integration

The Challenge

An energy supplier serves private and business customers. This can be either a local municipal supplier or a company operating on a regional or national scale. The supplier procures or generates energy, such as electricity, district heating, local heating or gas. An energy supply covers elementary basic needs such as providing heat to people, it is an important sector of the critical infrastructure. Extensive technology is used to protect the physical security of an energy supplier: Perimeter protection, access control, video surveillance and intrusion detection systems are standard to ensure that no unauthorized persons can enter the premises.

These security systems are supplemented by a fire alarm system, sprinkler system as well as building automation and information systems such as temperature and humidity monitoring or leakage warning systems. Often, large suppliers also have their own company or plant fire department.

Multi-site control

If an energy supplier has several, partly also unmanned, locations, a central control room offers the optimal solution to increase efficiency as well as to reduce costs. With location servers in the individual sites, WinGuard collects the information of all connected systems. Event messages are displayed in a unified user interface at the central workstations. In case of extensive installations, segmentation offers the possibility to encapsulate individual segments (e.g. sites) from receiving data, which not only increases security but also performance because less data has to be distributed and reconciled in the network. With WinGuard and several standby servers, the complete database of the main system can be carried redundantly. Therefore, reliability and highest availability of the system are guaranteed. Distributed sites can be networked via location servers to ensure independent operation of the sites in case of a possible failure of the central servers or the network.

Consolidated event processing

Nowadays, in particular perimeter protection as well as access control and intrusion detection systems are important for an energy supplier: Theft of valuable material such as copper but especially vandalism and sabotage must be prevented. Here, a short response time is particularly important to ensure security of supply. In case several systems connected to WinGuard trigger an alarm at the same time, the platform automatically consolidates the event processing: Cross-system measures are initiated such as switching on the cameras in the relevant areas as well as closing doors and gates. In addition, operators in the control center are guided through the correct and secure event processing with dynamic workflows so that additional emergency personnel can be called in quickly. By increasing the speed at which alarms are processed, greater damage at energy suppliers can mostly be avoided.

WinGuard – an open integration platform that comprehensively ensures security at the energy supplier

WinGuard can be extended anytime by additional operator stations, adapters and function modules so that even continuously expanding legal requirements within the critical infrastructure can be easily realized by the energy supplier.

Comprehensive security via one platform

Via the open integration platform WinGuard, all technical systems installed at an energy supplier can be controlled in a unified way. Especially in case of simultaneous risk or alarm events, this is important to maintain an uninterrupted supply.