Today, secure remote access has not only become paramount to business continuity on the IT side, but also on the OT side where even short-lived disruptions to factory operations and production lines can show up in the bottom line. Many OT vendors and services firms saw the pandemic as the catalyst for accelerating digital transformation and quickly capitalized on new remote access technologies to become more resilient and adaptive to changing market conditions. Remote predictive maintenance, monitoring, and troubleshooting are enabling global manufacturing companies to become agile, increasing uptime and lowering operational costs.
In addition, smart factories driven by digital transformation and intelligent automation, in my opinion, demand a level of security that exceeds the leading security principles applied on the IT side. In fact, the global uptick in cyberattacks against industrial targets has made it necessary for manufacturing leaders to balance urgent production demands with the increased need for security. In seeking the best, most modern security architectures to protect manufacturing assets, these leaders, I am seeing, are turning to IT security principles for inspiration.
At Zscaler, we have joined forces with Siemens and developed an innovative joint solution that enables greater uptime, cost efficiency, and top-of-the-line security based on zero trust principles applied to OT devices and data. Siemens' SCALANCE LPE, the leading industrial edge platform at the core of the production environment, can be paired with the Zscaler Private Access App Connector that is efficiently installed as a Docker Container. This architecture allows users granular access to each resource connected to SCALANCE devices via Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange cloud platform. Siemens recommends customers secure their OT environments by adding Zscaler as a preferred remote access method to manage and perform tasks in the OT environment. You can read more about the joint solution in this blog by Hannes Barth, Head of the Business Line for Industrial and Rugged Networks at Siemens.
Zscaler and Siemens together now enable factory employees, maintenance and support technicians, and third-party partners to securely and remotely access the factory floor from wherever they are in the world, over any network connection. Together, we help customers improve factory uptime, protect their production systems against critical threats, hire talent in remote locations to alleviate workforce staffing shortages, and stay cost-efficient. To learn more, please contact [email protected] or talk to your Zscaler or Siemens account representative.
