Zscaler and Siemens Partnership Delivers All-in-One Solution to Accelerate Secure Digitalization for OT Environments

Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZS), the leader in cloud security, and Siemens, an innovation leader in automation and digitalization, deliver a proven solution, that combines the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ cloud security platform and Siemens’ devices to help customers with Operational Technology (OT) infrastructures accelerate their secure digital transformation initiatives. Offered direct from Siemens, customers worldwide will be able to obtain the Zscaler Remote Access for OT alongside Siemens’ flexible local processing platform SCALANCE LPE. The new solution enables customers to securely manage, control quality assurance, and analyze production OT infrastructures and its applications from any workplace in any location.

In today’s hybrid working environment and economy, the need for factory automation, higher production output, and an agile staff for OT environments is greater than ever. Concurrently, factories are faced with more debilitating cyberattacks that can cause financial and human loss. Zscaler and Siemens have recognized that for factory modernization and digitalization to occur, new security approaches, like Zero Trust access, will be added to traditional defense-in-depth strategies. Factories layering in Zero Trust access capabilities can now reduce their risk while using remote staff, or connecting to the internet and to the cloud, enabling them to take greater advantage of technology innovation that speeds factory output.  

With the extension of Zscaler Private Access™ for OT,  factory staff, contractors and third-party workers can remotely access factory systems securely to perform maintenance, monitoring and other tasks.

“The Zero Trust principles are incredibly relevant to smart factory initiatives,” said Herbert Wegmann, General Manager “Digital Connectivity and Power” at Siemens Digital Industries. “Operators are embracing digitalization to bring more automation and intelligence to their production. But it also brings a new dimension of connectivity between shopfloors and the internet.”

“I am thrilled that Siemens’ and Zscaler’s joint customers now have an integrated, highly secure approach to obtain and deploy Zscaler Private Access for OT environments directly from Siemens,” said Jay Chaudhry, CEO, Chairman, and founder at Zscaler. “Customers will be able to digitalize their factories faster by adding a Zero Trust access layer to their OT infrastructure. Our product and go-to-market collaboration will help ensure that industrial customers can improve factory uptime through reduced risk to remote worker access, while at the same time protecting themselves from the influx in cyberthreats facing them today.” 

Key advantages of the Zscaler and Siemens secure OT remote access solution include:

• Secure remote access to plants and machines - CISA recently pointed out that VPNs can contain risks when not updated. Now, customers can layer zero trust onto traditional defense-in-depth strategies to provide a more secure remote access solution to the factory floor.
• Privileged remote access for internal and third-party users — Browser-based access allows authorized admins to execute commands from remote endpoints to OT systems over secure and fully isolated connections, without the need to install an agent on the OT systems or any software on the user’s endpoints.
• Seamless integration into existing OT networks — Docker-based app connectors make it easy to deploy secure remote access on industrial control systems (ICS) and industrial network components. 
• OT-IT Convergence. Users can safely converge their OT/IT worlds using  Zscaler Private Access for IT-OT access.
• SaaS Service via a distributed, multi-tenant security exchange - the first SaaS based OT remote access solution is powered by Zscaler’s security cloud which has 150+ data centers worldwide. This results in a highly scalable and stable service. On average, they provide 200,000 unique security updates per day, stop 7Bn threats on average, and ensure the fastest connections between users and assets, supporting factory production no matter where the users are located. 

Availability

Customers can learn about the solution live at the Hannover Messe Fair at Hannover, Germany 30 May – 2 June at Siemens’ virtual and in-person booth.

Additional Resources

Zscaler Private Access for OT 

3 Essential Zero Trust Principles for Reducing Security Risk in OT Environments 

Zscaler Private Access for IIoT/OT now sold by Siemens for Industrial Security 

OT-IT Convergence Brought to Reality by Siemens and Zscaler