Earlier this year, we introduced a series of technical workshops for manufacturing in a few cities. The free workshops focus on real-world applications and best practices for manufacturing with an emphasis on how to improve operations, drive innovation and reduce risk.

I am happy to share that we will continue this program and have expanded it across the U.S. The new cities where the workshops will be held are the following:

? Chicago: Tuesday, October 23, 2018, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm
? Indianapolis: Thursday, October 25, 2018 9:00 am to 5:00 pm (with Rockwell, Panduit and Kirby Risk)
? Boston: Tuesday October 30, 2018, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm
? Nashville: Tuesday, November 6, 2018, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm
? St. Louis: Thursday, November 8, 2018, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm
? Seattle: Thursday, November 29, 2018, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm

Here's the agenda for the technical workshops (except Indianapolis, which you can find here):

? Connected Factory Architecture & Use Cases -Part 1 and Part 2.: Cisco's Connected Factory, industrial companies can build one common, converged, and rugged plant-to-business network. Presented by solution architect, this session will cover Factory Network, Factory Wireless and Factory Security reference architectures and solutions for delivering business outcomes. This session is targeted for customers dealing with network solutions for control networks including manufacturing and other control environments. Join us and learn how to apply common connected factory architectures to enhance visibility into your operations, increase efficiency, and defense-in-depth security.

? How to Evolve Your Plant Security from Today's Reality to Tomorrow's Connected Factory: Everybody has a vision for the future of manufacturing -Industry 4.0 and more. But what always seems to be left out is how to get there. We know where we are -we might know our security status as well -but the question remains how do we get to where we want to be? This session talks about incremental steps you can take to build a strong, secure foundation and then build up to greater and more secure connectivity.

? Solutions Demo -Utilizing Network management for increased visibility and security: In this session, we will demonstrate Cisco's Industrial Network Director ( IND ) and its ability to enable organizations to standardize configurations and provide visibility for operations teams into network operation as it relates to end devices that are connected. We will dive into the integration of IND with Cisco's Identity Security Engine ( ISE ) to leverage rich industrial contextual information and enable operation teams to apply security policies to end devices based on the intent of the operation of the device. Last we will discuss how IND's rich industrial information can be pushed into Cisco's Stealthwatch solution to provide visibility into network traffic and alert on changes to traffic patterns.

Limited space is available, and these workshops will fill up fast. Be sure to register by clicking here for the registration site and choose the city you plan to attend (for Indianapolis, register here). We look forward to seeing you at these events and working with you on your digital transformation.