Remote access into OT and ICS environments has always carried risk.
But the nature of that risk has changed.
Threat detections now happen in seconds. Sensors identify anomalous behavior in real time. Identity platforms continuously evaluate trust. SIEM and OT security tools generate rich, contextual alerts instantly.
Yet in most environments, access enforcement is still manual. A detection triggers a ticket. A human reviews. A decision is made. Minutes—or hours—pass before action is taken.
In critical infrastructure, that delay is the attack window.
Xona Active Defense closes it.
Active Defense transforms Xona’s secure remote access platform from static policy enforcement into dynamic, event-driven session control. Rather than waiting for a human to intervene, Xona Gateways now respond automatically to real-time risk signals from OT asset visibility and detection platforms.
The core idea is simple: if your detection stack sees something, your access controls should respond—immediately, proportionally, and without operator intervention.
Risk changes. Access adapts. All at the session layer.
At the core of Active Defense is a bi-directional event loop between OT detection platforms and the Xona Gateway. Here’s what that loop looks like in practice:
No tickets. No manual playbooks. No exposure gap. Enforcement happens in seconds—not hours.
This is where Active Defense takes a fundamentally different approach from traditional network-level enforcement.
In OT environments, dropping a network tunnel or cutting firewall access can cause cascading disruptions—alarms, lost communications, unsafe states. That’s why Xona operates at the session layer, not the network layer. Instead of bluntly severing connectivity, Active Defense applies precise, proportional controls to the specific remote session at risk:
The result is graduated enforcement that protects your most critical assets without creating unnecessary operational risk. Security teams get the response they need. Plant operations stay intact.
Alert fatigue is real. Any enforcement system that fires on every single detection event is going to cause more harm than good—especially in environments where uptime is measured in safety, not just SLAs.
Active Defense includes a multi-source correlation model that evaluates patterns before escalating to a higher response tier. Multiple medium-severity detections tied to the same asset or user can automatically elevate enforcement, while isolated low-confidence signals are held until context supports action.
This means:
Security becomes contextual instead of reactive.
Industrial control environments demand deterministic, tamper-resistant behavior. A security system that can itself be spoofed or replayed is no security system at all. Active Defense was designed with this in mind from the ground up.
Every enforcement action is protected by:
No spoofed enforcement actions. No duplicate session terminations. No assumed state changes. Every action is authenticated, verifiable, and compliant.
Imagine a third-party vendor is remotely updating firmware on a programmable logic controller (PLC) at a water treatment facility. Mid-session, an OT anomaly detection platform identifies suspicious command behavior that doesn’t match the expected update pattern.
With traditional remote access, that alert might sit in a queue while an analyst assesses it. The vendor’s session stays active. Commands keep flowing.
With Active Defense:
The attack window shrinks from hours to seconds. The PLC is protected. The plant keeps running.
Active Defense is designed for organizations where the stakes of a compromised remote session are too high to tolerate manual enforcement delays:
If your detection stack already operates in real time, your enforcement should too.
Active Defense is available now as part of the Xona secure remote access platform in v5.5. The initial release supports Forescout’s OT sensor integration, with Nozomi and Dragos integrations planned for future releases.
Whether you’re modernizing OT access architecture, reducing mean-time-to-enforce, or closing the gap between detection and response, Active Defense delivers session-aware, automated protection designed specifically for industrial environments
New to Xona? Schedule a demo to see Active Defense in action and learn how it integrates with your existing OT detection stack.
Existing Xona customers? Contact your Xona representative to enable Active Defense in your deployment today.