2026 Gartner® Market Guide for CPS Secure Remote Access

Cyolo is named as a Representative Vendor in the 2026 Gartner Market Guide for CPS Secure Remote Access.

What Is CPS Secure Remote Access?

Unlike traditional IT remote access, CPS secure remote access solutions are built to account for industrial assets, native protocols, and the real-world safety and uptime requirements of OT environments.

The Real Risk: “Shadow Access” in CPS Environments

One of the most significant findings in the Market Guide is how common undocumented remote access has become across CPS environments.

The report states:

These unmanaged access paths often bypass formal governance and monitoring while connecting directly to production systems – increasing operational, safety, and compliance risk in ways that organizations are not even aware of.

Why VPNs and Jump Servers Are Becoming a Liability in OT and Industrial Environments

According to the Market Guide, legacy remote access approaches are increasingly misaligned with the realities of CPS and OT environments.

Beyond security exposure, VPNs and jump servers provide broad network access without understanding industrial protocols or operational context. They offer limited ability to restrict actions at the asset level or supervise remote activity in real time, making it difficult to enforce least privilege or control third-party and OEM access. In safety-critical environments, this turns routine remote support into a potential risk to uptime and operations.

Key Capabilities to Look for in a CPS Secure Remote Access Solution

Rather than force-fitting IT tools into OT settings, the Market Guide describes a new class of purpose-built CPS secure remote access solutions designed around how industrial environments actually operate.

The following capabilities are noted as becoming baseline expectations:

• Asset- and protocol-level access control

• Just-in-time, time-bound access with no standing privileges

• Agentless architectures suitable for legacy CPS assets

• Real-time session monitoring, supervision, and termination

Together, these features support the shift from simply enabling remote connectivity to enabling secure remote operations.

Why This Market Guide Matters

Remote access is no longer an exception or emergency workaround. It is now foundational to how CPS environments are operated, maintained, and supported – often by third parties and almost always under time pressure.

This Market Guide provides the independent Gartner perspective on:

• Why legacy remote access approaches are breaking down in CPS environments

• How hidden access paths introduce operational and safety risk

• How the CPS secure remote access market is evolving

• What secure remote operations require in practice

Gartner, Market Guide for CPS Secure Remote Access, By Katell Thielemann, Wam Foster, Sumit Rajput, 4 February 2026.

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