Hello all!
One of our customer is asking for a Managed switch.
“To support cybersecurity features and meet standard IEC62443.”
Is 0ACST052.1 [Industrial Switch] a suitable product to recommend?
Or rather, how do we determine if a switch is managed or unmanaged?
Hi,
in my opinion, there’s no simple “yes or no” answer. It depends on what the customer wants be able to do with the device.
The term “managed switch” does not define clearly, what functionality a device supports, it more or less only defines that the switch has configuration capabilities. Here’s a short explanation from Cisco about managed versus unmanaged switch:
The primary distinction between managed and unmanaged network switches lies in the level of control, configuration, and monitoring they offer.
The B&R TSN switch offers functionality like firmware upgrade, user / role based access control, and protocol-based encryption of configuration access / change on the switch, which are requirements for cyber security and IEC 62443 compliance (for details please see chapter 9 of the product manual).
But this switch is mainly designed for supporting OPC UA FX (TSN) inside a machine network or between machines, so some functions that are maybe expected / used in other managed switches (for example like VLAN, Access Control Lists (ACLs), 802.1X authentication) aren’t supported.
So it really depends on what the customer plans to do with the device.
Best regards!
Many thanks for the clear explanation and direction to move on forward with this discussion with the customer. 