Secure Remote Access for OT and ICS: Insights from the Experts
As the shift from legacy system support to Zero Trust architectures accelerates, Secure Remote Access (SRA) for Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control System (ICS) environments has emerged as a critical topic for many of our customers.
To help address these challenges, we invited Warwick Ashford, Senior Analyst, Cybersecurity and Identity at KuppingerCole to share insights from his recently published Leadership Compass report, which analyzes SRA solutions for the industrial world—systems where human and machine access converge, and where risk and complexity are no longer theoretical.
He made the case right away: SRA should not be treated as an add-on, but rather as a core component of modern operational strategy in industrial environments.
Six Key Challenges Facing Industrial Organizations
Ashford laid out six key challenges facing industrial organizations today:
- Legacy and insecure systems
- Lack of visibility or asset inventory
- Third-party or vendor access
- Session control and monitoring,
- Operational and availability constraints
- Segmentation and lateral movement risk
Each of these resonated with our audience—and Ashford connected them directly to real-world industrial operations, noting when remote access fails on any one of these fronts, what should be an enabler quickly becomes a liability.
Underlining this urgency, Ashford referenced the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)’s alert that threat actors continue to exploit internetaccessible OT/ICS devices.
This set the tone: industrial operators must assume exposure and rethink how access is managed and monitored.
This is more than technical nuance. It is foundational to their mission.
Finding the Right Solution
Ashford didn’t stop at the problem; he outlined what a mature SRA solution must deliver:
- Strong, contextaware authentication;
- Protocol isolation and filtering
- Continuous monitoring including session recording and realtime intervention
- Resilience with high availability and failover
- Integration with identity providers, policy engines, vaults, and monitoring platforms
- Legacy protocol support
- Central governance at scale
- Auditability for compliance
With this background, he turned his focus towards how SRA solutions are evolving, and laid out the top trends, including: Zero Trust access and leastprivilege enforcement; addressing IT/OT convergence, microsegmentation, and machine-to-machine/non-human access, among others.
As he walked through this evolution, it became clear to our audience that SRA isn’t just about providing remote access—but should be a comprehensive solution central to a successful industrial cybersecurity strategy.
Of particular interest to our audience was Ashford’s commentary on how our PrivX OT solution stands out, and how its capabilities address many of the six core challenges he had walked through earlier.
Especially in environments where legacy equipment, remote third-party access, and stringent uptime demands collide:
- Modern microservices architecture
- Browser-based UI
- Flexible deployment (on-prem, cloud, Kubernetes, airgapped)
- Support for passwordless and keyless access with ephemeral certificates
- Justintime and justenough access
- Microsegmentation
- Session recording
- Asset discovery
- Integration with major identity and IAM systems
As the session wrapped up, the tone was optimistic and actionable. SRA for OT/ICS is no longer optional. It’s an operational and strategic enabler.
His presentation underscored the call to action: if you’re responsible for secure remote access in industrial environments, now is the moment to move beyond mere tunneling.
It’s time to embrace context-aware access, industrial-grade SRA, visibility from edge to command center, and a future where credentials don’t define your security posture—they support it.
Learn more:
Barbara Hoffman
Product Marketing Manager, PrivX ZT Suite at SSH Communications Security
