Definition of remote access to OT environments. Some reflections

Considering that during the III Ibero-American Congress on Industrial Cybersecurity we will address the problem of how to perform secure remote access to OT environments, we would like to introduce in this entry some of the concepts and reflections that we will discuss during the development of the talk that we will give on Thursday, October 8.

What is Understood by Remote Access to the OT Environment?

In IT environments, it is defined as the capacity or functionality that is offered to the agents of an organization to access non-public (private) computing resources, information and/or operation from external locations that are not those associated with the organization itself.

On the other hand, in OT environments, it is defined as the capacity or functionality that is offered to the agents of an organization (internal and external-engineering, integrators, contractors) to access field devices, computing resources, non-public (private) information and/or operation that are located in a dedicated, protected and segmented network (OT), from a device that is not located in said network. In this case, access from the IT network to the OT network, access from a WAN to the OT network, as well as access from the Internet to the OT network is considered remote.

Some reflections on the management of the remote access domain to OT environments

1. The possibility of accessing securely remotely cannot degrade the performance of the real-time management system.
2. Real-time management requires immediacy on many occasions, obviating secure access procedures.
3. Industrial environments make it difficult to authenticate users for secure remote access (dirt, sounds…).
4. The life cycle of control devices does not facilitate secure remote access.

Do you agree? If you go to the congress, we will be happy to discuss these points with you and know your opinion.