News
Zscaler, Inc and Siemens deliver a proven solution
May 2022 by Marc Jacob
Zscaler, Inc and Siemens deliver a proven solution, that combines the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange cloud security platform and Siemens’ devices to help customers with Operational Technology (OT) infrastructures accelerate their secure digital transformation initiatives. Offered direct from Siemens, customers worldwide will be able to obtain the Zscaler Remote Access for OT alongside Siemens’ flexible local processing platform SCALANCE LPE. The new solution enables customers to securely manage, control quality assurance, and analyse production OT infrastructures and its applications from any workplace in any location.
In today’s hybrid working environment and economy, the need for factory automation, higher production output, and an agile staff for OT environments is greater than ever. Concurrently, factories are faced with more debilitating cyberattacks that can cause financial and human loss. Zscaler and Siemens have recognised that for factory modernisation and digitalisation to occur, new security approaches, like Zero Trust access, will be added to traditional defense-in-depth strategies. Factories layering in Zero Trust access capabilities can now reduce their risk while using remote staff, or connecting to the internet and to the cloud, enabling them to take greater advantage of technology innovation that speeds factory output.
With the extension of Zscaler Private Access for OT, factory staff, contractors and third-party workers can remotely access factory systems securely to perform maintenance, monitoring and other tasks.
Key advantages of the Zscaler and Siemens secure OT remote access solution include:
• Secure remote access to plants and machines - CISA recently pointed out that VPNs can contain risks when not updated. Now, customers can layer zero trust onto traditional defence-in-depth strategies to provide a more secure remote access solution to the factory floor
• Privileged remote access for internal and third-party users — Browser-based access allows authorised admins to execute commands from remote endpoints to OT systems over secure and fully isolated connections, without the need to install an agent on the OT systems or any software on the user’s endpoints
• Seamless integration into existing OT networks — Docker-based app connectors make it easy to deploy secure remote access on industrial control systems (ICS) and industrial network components
• OT-IT Convergence. Users can safely converge their OT/IT worlds using Zscaler Private Access for IT-OT access
• SaaS Service via a distributed, multi-tenant security exchange - the first SaaS based OT remote access solution is powered by Zscaler’s security cloud which has 150+ data centres worldwide. This results in a highly scalable and stable service. On average, they provide 200,000 unique security updates per day, stop 7Bn threats on average, and ensure the fastest connections between users and assets, supporting factory production no matter where the users are located
