Case Study Be Power

An emphasis on security

“The security of our service and charging stations is at the top of the agenda for us as a CPO,” explained Nicola Morotti, Head of IT at Be Power. “We want to implement the best solution possible to prevent anyone from exploiting our geographically distributed charging stations to attack our network and infrastructure.”

With emnify, Be Charge applies two security layers to achieve this end. On the first level, the team restricts SIM use to the modem of the charging station with IMEI lock, so it cannot work in unintended devices for identity theft to communicate with the Be Charge platform.

On the network level, the connections between the charging stations and Be Charge’s backend are established within a private network where third-party devices cannot infiltrate.

“We use emnify’s Intra-Cloud Connect to ensure that all our traffic does not break out to the public Internet and remains secure inside the AWS environment,” said Morotti.

Connecting the dots in EV charging operations

As the second-largest charge point operator in Italy, maximizing service uptime to deliver a delightful user experience while constantly improving operational efficiency are two sides of the same coin for Be Charge to attain rapid growth.

emnify’s Data Streamer brings the connectivity puzzle that Be Charge needs to put together the complete picture of its charging operations.

Real-time connectivity data is amassed and fed into a central analytics tool where it is examined with various other data sources to generate actionable insights for:

1. The operations team to maintain reliably working charging stations
   
   
2. The IT team to effectively manage the charging management backend
   
   
3. The security team to monitor network traffic and SIM card communication
   
   

“At the most basic level, it is important for us to cross-check all the data in our system. For example, if the SIM card is connected but the device is not on our platform, this could indicate a problem on either the hardware or the application.”

“We also compare the number of network events on EMnify’s side with the number of connections and events on our platform to understand if the problem lies in a specific mobile operator. If so, we can put that operator on the blocklist using the EMnify Portal to resolve the issue,” said Morotti.

“All numbers put together in the same room help us improve our business and reduce the manual effort to maintain our infrastructure. To grow our network more than six times, our operations need to scale accordingly."

Nicola Morotti, Be Power

Taking reliability and efficiency up a notch

Having fine-grained visibility into its operations is just one way for Be Charge to ensure the availability and scalability of one of Italy’s largest EV charging networks.

From testing and provisioning new devices to triaging and maintenance of existing charging stations, Be Power’s team look to optimize their processes every step of the way.

“The SIM cards are integrated into the charging stations already from production for quality assurance. Using emnify’s API, we can easily automate SIM provisioning and activation, which otherwise would be a massive workload for us,” explained Morotti.

When it comes to charging stations that have been up and running in the field, the ability to execute diagnostics and troubleshooting from afar when malfunctions arise saves significant time and costs for the team.

“emnify’s OpenVPN integrates OCPP functionality to give us more flexibility and possibilities in remote maintenance of the charging stations, for example getting charger live logs and configuring components like the LCD display. It is integral to our daily operations.”

Nicola Morotti, Be Power