Cloud security company Zscaler and automation and digitization company Siemens have announced a partnership to help customers with operational technology infrastructures (OT) accelerate their secure digital transformation goals.
Zscaler says that by combining the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange cloud security platform and Siemens appliances, customers worldwide can use Zscaler Remote Access for OT alongside Siemens’ processing platform SCALANCE LPE.
The companies say this enables customers to securely manage control quality assurance and analyze production OT infrastructures and their applications from any workplace in any location.
Zscaler says that in today’s hybrid work environment and economy, the need for factory automation, higher production output, and flexible workforces for OT environments is greater than ever.
It says factories face devastating cyber attacks that can cause financial and human damage. Zscaler and Siemens say that new security approaches, such as Zero Trust access, will be added to traditional deep defense strategies to modernize and digitally transform factories.
Zscaler says factories with Zero Trust access capabilities can now reduce risk when using remote workforces or connecting to the Internet and the cloud. This allows them to take advantage of technological innovation that accelerates factory output.
Zscaler Private Access for OT allows factory personnel, contractors, and remote workers to securely access factory systems remotely to perform maintenance, monitoring, and other tasks.
Herbert Wegmann, general manager of digital connectivity and power supply at Siemens, says the Zero Trust principles are incredibly relevant to smart factory initiatives.
“Operators are embracing digitalization to bring more automation and intelligence into their production, but it also brings a new dimension of connectivity between store floors and the internet,” he says.
Jay Chaudry, CEO, Chairman, and Founder of Zscaler, said he was pleased that the joint customers of Siemens and Zscaler now have an integrated, highly secure approach to obtain and deploy Zscaler Private Access for OT environments.
“Customers will be able to digitize their factories faster by adding a Zero Trust access layer to their OT infrastructure,” he says.
“Our product and go-to-market partnership will enable industrial customers to improve plant uptime by reducing the risk of remote worker access while protecting themselves from the influx of cyber threats facing them today. faced.”
The main benefits of Zscaler and Siemens’s secure OT remote access service are:
Secure remote access to installations and machines
CISA recently pointed out that VPNs can pose risks if not updated. Now customers can add zero trust to traditional strategies to provide a more secure remote access solution to the factory floor.
Privileged remote access for internal and external users
Browser-based access allows authorized administrators to execute commands from remote endpoints to OT systems over secure and completely isolated connections without installing an agent on the OT systems or software on the user’s endpoints. Seamless integration into existing OT networks Docker-based app connectors. This makes deploying secure remote access to industrial control systems (ICS) and industrial network components easy.
Users can securely converge their OT/IT worlds with Zscaler Private Access for IT-OT access.
SaaS service through a distributed, multi-tenant security exchange
The industry’s first SaaS-based remote access OT solution is powered by the Zscalers security cloud, with over 150 data centers worldwide. They provide an average of 200,000 unique security updates daily, stop 7 billion threats and provide the fastest connections between users and assets, and support factory production no matter where users are located. This results in a highly scalable and stable service.
