Introduction
As operational technology (OT) environments grow more connected, and more targeted, securing access has become a non-negotiable priority. Industrial organizations must support access for third-party vendors, remote engineers, and field operators without compromising safety, uptime, or compliance. In its 2025 Leadership Compass for Secure Remote Access in OT/ICS, KuppingerCole Analysts explores the rapid evolution of this market and the technologies designed to meet the unique challenges of critical infrastructure. The report evaluates platforms not only on features, but on their real-world deployability, alignment with Zero Trust principles, and ability to support regulatory mandates like NERC CIP and IEC 62443. This blog distills the top 6 takeaways from the report, focused not on vendor promotion, but on what matters most to CISOs, compliance teams, and OT leaders making access decisions in the field.Takeaway 1: Secure Remote Access Has Moved from Niche to Non-Negotiable
Secure remote access (SRA) is no longer a stopgap or an IT workaround; it’s become foundational to industrial cybersecurity. According to KuppingerCole, demand for SRA in OT and ICS environments is accelerating due to the convergence of IT and OT networks, rising cyber threats, and mounting regulatory pressure. Traditionally, remote access in industrial environments was limited, heavily manual, and often avoided due to risk. But today, organizations must enable remote diagnostics, vendor maintenance, and real-time incident response, all without compromising the integrity of control systems or exposing legacy assets. KuppingerCole notes that many SRA deployments are now occurring at Purdue Model levels 3 and 3.5, where remote access can be governed, monitored, and segmented away from the most sensitive assets. While access to Level 1 and 2 systems (like PLCs and RTUs) remains tightly restricted, the need for visibility and responsiveness is driving broader SRA adoption across operations.“The SRA market for OT and ICS is shifting from niche deployments to a foundational element of industrial cybersecurity.” - Warwick Ashford, KuppingerCole Analysts
Takeaway 2: Access No Longer Means Connectivity: Protocol Isolation is the New Default
Legacy OT systems were never designed to be connected, much less accessed remotely. Yet today, remote support, diagnostics, and patching often require reaching systems that lack modern security controls like encryption or authentication. This is where protocol isolation has emerged as a defining capability for modern SRA platforms. Rather than exposing OT networks via VPNs or direct RDP sessions, protocol isolation acts as a secure, policy-controlled proxy, enabling remote access without creating a routable connection between the user’s device and critical systems. KuppingerCole emphasizes that protocol isolation isn’t just a “nice to have”, it’s a necessary layer of defense, particularly for environments that can’t patch or harden aging assets. It prevents lateral movement, reduces the risk of ransomware propagation, and allows access to field-level assets (like HMIs or SCADA workstations) without exposing the broader control network.“Protocol isolation gateways are increasingly used to secure access to outdated or unpatchable systems without directly exposing them to external networks.” - Warwick Ashford, KuppingerCole Analysts
Takeaway 3: Compliance Demands are Shaping Product Design
For many industrial organizations, compliance is no longer a downstream concern, it’s a key driver in how secure remote access solutions are selected, implemented, and operated. KuppingerCole highlights that regulations like IEC 62443, NERC CIP, and the EU’s NIS2 Directive are accelerating SRA adoption and heavily influencing product design. Platforms must now provide robust authentication (including multifactor support), granular access controls, real-time monitoring, and detailed session logging; not just to enhance security, but to produce verifiable, audit-ready records. Solutions that simplify this process by integrating with existing identity systems, automating session recording, or generating compliance reports offer significant operational value. As the report notes, traditional IT tools often fall short in these areas, either because they lack OT context or require extensive customization to meet regulatory expectations. For compliance teams, this means that secure access tools are no longer just part of the security stack, they’re a critical piece of the compliance and governance strategy.“SRA platforms increasingly offer built-in reporting, governance dashboards, and compliance templates to help operators meet… industry- or region-specific requirements.” - Warwick Ashford, KuppingerCole Analysts
Takeaway 4: Monitoring and Oversight are Now Table Stakes
Visibility into who is accessing critical systems and what they’re doing while connected is no longer a premium feature. According to KuppingerCole, real-time session monitoring, logging, and oversight are baseline expectations for secure remote access in OT environments. Modern SRA platforms are expected to record every session, log every command or keystroke, and allow administrators to observe or intervene in real time. These capabilities are essential for not only detecting potential misuse or policy violations, but also for providing a complete forensic record in the event of a security incident. In industrial settings where third-party access is common and operational downtime is costly; this level of oversight helps balance agility with control. It also plays a direct role in supporting compliance, particularly with mandates that require provable least-privilege enforcement and post-event traceability. Without these controls, organizations risk flying blind, unable to verify that access policies are working or respond effectively when they’re not.Takeaway 5: Deployment Flexibility is One of the New Differentiators
As the SRA market matures, core capabilities like MFA, encrypted tunnels, and session recording are widely available across vendors. What’s beginning to separate leaders from the rest is that OT buyers are assessing not only what a platform offers, but how well it fits into constrained, often legacy-rich environments. KuppingerCole underscores that deployment flexibility, integration breadth, and operational resilience are now central to buyer decision-making, especially in OT/ICS environments. These are not greenfield IT environments. Many sites face low bandwidth, limited IT resources, air-gapped networks, and legacy infrastructure that can’t be rearchitected. SRA platforms that require cloud dependencies, complex installs, or network reconfiguration may check the features box, but still fall short in the field. What matters now is whether a solution can deploy in minutes (not months), operate in degraded environments, and interoperate cleanly with existing identity systems and operational workflows.“As capabilities converge, competitive advantage increasingly depends on deployment flexibility, integration breadth, and the ability to operate in resource-constrained, high-availability industrial settings.” - Warwick Ashford, KuppingerCole AnalystsThis is where pragmatism, not just product depth, is emerging as the real differentiator.
Takeaway 6: Leadership Now Requires Innovation + Usability
The vendors recognized as leaders in KuppingerCole’s 2025 report didn’t earn that position based on feature volume alone. In fact, as more platforms reach parity on baseline capabilities, the bar for leadership is rising, and it now includes both technical innovation and practical usability. KuppingerCole points to a blend of adaptive Zero Trust architectures, behavioral analytics, flexible deployment models, and seamless support for legacy protocols as key indicators of leadership. But just as importantly, the top solutions are designed for real-world use, with intuitive interfaces, fast setup, and minimal operational friction. For buyers, this means that leadership isn’t about theoretical security or flashy features. It’s about delivering secure access that actually works in the environments that need it most, without imposing complexity or requiring workarounds. Among the leaders recognized in the report are both large security platforms and specialized providers who focus solely on OT/ICS access, reflecting the growing importance of domain expertise in this evolving market.Leaders “distinguish themselves through advancements such as adaptive Zero Trust architectures for OT, [and] expanded interoperability with legacy and proprietary ICS protocols.” - Warwick Ashford, KuppingerCole Analysts
