National Gas Distributor Achieves Pipeline Visibility

The Customer: A National Natural Gas Distributor

This North American natural gas distributor is responsible for supplying natural gas to residential, business and industrial users across the county. It operates more than 400 pipeline regulation and measurement facilities spread over 9,000 kilometers of mostly inaccessible terrain.

How Does a National Gas Distributor Get Visibility into 420 Dispersed Field Sites?

For this natural gas distributor, managing the integrity of the country’s critical infrastructure – particularly the safety, efficiency and reliability of its natural gas supply – is paramount. To achieve that, the distributor needed real-time, ongoing visibility into its site connectivity uptime.

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Midstream oil and gas companies operate within complex environments. Their industrial control systems (ICS) include dozens of equipment types and cover vast distances. This makes it challenging to monitor, manage and secure pipeline systems that aren’t thoroughly documented or easy to visualize.

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Thanks to new technology, it’s now easy to implement passive network monitoring with automated visualization and asset discovery. The same solution can provide early detection of operational problems and cybersecurity risks. However, to take advantage of this, reliable connectivity with remote stations is needed.

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This was the challenge a North American natural gas distributor was facing. They wanted visibility into pipeline operations down to the site level but needed to verify the service reliability of their connectivity provider to achieve that.

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The natural gas company had contracted a managed service provider (MSP)/telecom service provider (TSP) to take care of its distribution infrastructure. The MSP/TSP lacked visibility into its network and had no ability to measure and monitor connectivity status. It needed to find an efficient way to inventory and verify all physical assets on the network and provide accurate reports on connection service uptime to the gas distributor.

Three Industry Experts Collaborate to Deliver Operation-Wide Visibility

To build capability fast, the natural gas distributor partnered with a specialized MSP/TSP. Its role was to maintain the communications infrastructure that connected the 420 gas distribution stations to a central control center. As part of the service contract, the MSP/ TSP was required to provide proof that the communication links met the quality and availability levels agreed upon in the contract.

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Based on their deep expertise in developing customized automation, control and telecom solutions for industrial systems, the MSP/TSP knew they could deliver an effective way to collect and transfer data from the field to the main control center. What they lacked was the means to monitor ongoing network communications down to the site level.

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Another regional expert – a systems integrator (SI) with extensive business process performance and ICS cybersecurity knowledge, believed they had the perfect solution to the connectivity monitoring problem. The SI had established a strategic partnership with Nozomi Networks in an effort to provide comprehensive OT asset visibility, critical process monitoring and streamlined IT/OT integration to their customers. They were confident that the Nozomi Networks OT and IoT visibility and security solution would perform well against the connectivity monitoring requirements.

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The MSP/SI project team launched a Proof of Concept (PoC) simulating 20 field stations. Nozomi Networks Guardian™ R50s – ruggedized physical sensors capable of withstanding temperatures from -40°C to +75°C, were deployed with immediate results. Not only did the Nozomi Networks solution quickly visualize the full ICS test network, within hours it delivered a detailed asset inventory and real-time network monitoring across all 20 stations in the trial.

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The successful PoC led to the purchase of over 420 Nozomi Networks R50 sensors for deployment at gas wells, tie points and compressor stations. The MSP/TSP also bought two Nozomi Networks Central Management Consoles™ (CMCs) to deliver consolidated and remote access to the ICS data from Guardian sensors deployed in the field.

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To achieve the desired level of operational visibility, Nozomi Networks worked closely with the MSP/TSP and SI to customize the integration between Nozomi Networks sensors and CMCs, the communications links and the main control center. To ensure that the deployment team had the knowledge and skills needed to manage the solution long-term, Nozomi Networks conducted several days of technical product training with members of the multiorganization project team.

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The MSP/TSP now uses Nozomi Networks Guardian sensors and CMCs to measure and document the availability of its communications links. It shares monthly reports with the natural gas distributor to confirm it is meeting the agreed upon service levels. The natural gas distributor is now confident that it is getting the service it is paying for.

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In addition to network communications, Guardian is able to monitor gas pipeline assets from different vendors. It displays summarized data related to alerts, incidents and vulnerabilities, and shows indicators of reliability issues such as unusual system variable values. This helps the MSP/TSP monitor individual site operations and report on communications link availability levels.

Network-Wide Visibility, Realtime Monitoring and Scalability

Thanks to the Nozomi Networks Guardian sensors, the MSP/TSP and SI are able to immediately visualize the pipeline distribution network. Access to key information such as TCP connections and protocols used between nodes and zones greatly enhanced the team’s understanding of the network structure and activity. Longer term benefits include reduced troubleshooting efforts and faster incident response.

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Nozomi Networks was able to demonstrate in the lab and in the field that the R50 appliance solution scales without compromising performance. It also adapts easily to all site requirements, thanks to a variety of appliance module and deployment options. Not only were the natural gas distributor, MSP/TSP and SI able to quickly meet their goals, but they also achieved a fast return on investment with no risk to ongoing industrial processes.

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The Nozomi Networks platform delivered the information needed to measure connectivity uptime at distribution sites. The operator is now able to determine whether contracted service levels are being met and has the tools to improve operational awareness and cybersecurity.

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While deployment of over 400 Guardian sensors continues, the natural gas distributor and MSP/TSP have also turned their attention to exploring other ways to tap into the advanced operational visibility and cyber security capabilities of the Nozomi Networks solution suite.