Many companies struggle to provide secure remote access to critical systems and highly sensitive assets. These important resources, including Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and sensitive data infrastructure, are vital to the operation of most businesses. Keeping them online and operating safely is paramount, as any disruption to their work can cost a company millions of dollars and put human safety at risk.
One strategy is to tighty restrict access, forcing companies to enact complicated access requirements. Imagine the cost of needing to be physically present on an oil rig in the North Atlantic, during winter, just to provide routine support for a critical system.
To avoid such a situation, the alternative is to allow more access than is truly needed, extending implicit trust to both people and devices. The outcome in this case is that third parties, such as contractors and maintenance teams, can often reach more than the critical systems they are intended to, increasing risk and expanding the company’s attack surface.
96% of companies allow third-party access to critical resources and systems.
49% of organizations have users with more access privileges than required to do their job.
The average company has 51 business critical applications.
It is now broadly recognized that cyberattacks pose a serious threat to safety, uptime, and performance, and many executive leadership teams are placing a new and needed emphasis on securing critical access. To prevent users from having to compromise on either security or convenient access, security professionals across a variety of industries are working to allow the proper level of access while simultaneously enforcing important security controls.
Connecting users to critical infrastructure is one of the riskiest behaviors in the zero-trust security framework. Each instance of access must be validated, the connection limited to only the items needed, and all activity must be monitored. Unfortunately, most existing technologies struggle to enable the needed security. This leaves organizations with the difficult choice between impossible-to-enforce access requirements or a risky security posture.
Zero-Trust Access Control for Critical Infrastructure
The Cyolo platform is purpose-built to enable users, including third-parties, to securely access the resources they need to do their work, without breaking the zero-trust model. Representing the next generation of Secure Remote Access (SRA), Cyolo's zero-trust access platform is specifically designed to support ICS environments and critical data infrastructure.
The Cyolo platform is agile, scalable, and network agnostic. Cyolo can be deployed on-premises to support ICS environments and provides real-time user-to-application access and control with continuous authorization and end- to-end encryption. Cyolo retrofits existing systems, including legacy applications and ICS deployments, with modern authentication infrastructure and provides an effective means to securely connect and manage on-site and remote users.
Cyolo routes user requests to the correct Identity Access Controller (IDAC) and can be deployed in a hardened Docker image with a high availability capacity. With Cyolo, each user session can be tightly secured, monitored, and controlled. Cyolo does not decrypt traffic, contains no sensitive customer information, and can be securely placed in an ICS environment. Ideal for air-gapped environments, Cyolo ensures all sessions are initiated, transmitted, and validated from within the customer environment.
Cyolo enables the creation of a completely private solution for an isolated ICS deployment, with no Internet connection needed. This level of security allows user access to any resource or application, no matter where it is hosted. With Cyolo, access to critical systems or resources is possible without compromising security controls.
