More than three-quarters have remote access tools installed on OT devices.
Research has found that a third of businesses have six or more remote access tools in their environment.
According to Claroty’s report on the Remote Access Sprawl, many of these tools are not enterprise-grade security products, and lack basic privileged access management capabilities.
It also found that 79% of organisations have more than two of these non-enterprise-grade tools installed on devices running on the OT network.
“Since the onset of the pandemic, organizations have been increasingly turning to remote access solutions to more efficiently manage their employees and third-party vendors, but while remote access is a necessity of this new reality, it has simultaneously created a security and operational dilemma,” said Tal Laufer, VP products, secure access at Claroty.
“While it makes sense for an organization to have remote access tools for IT services and for OT remote access, it does not justify the tool sprawl inside the sensitive OT network that we have identified in our study, which leads to increased risk and operational complexity.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
