Remote Privileged Access Management (RPAM) is a cybersecurity approach designed to control and secure remote access to systems by users with elevated privileges such as third-party vendors, IT administrators, or support engineers. RPAM is a subcategory of Privileged Access Management (PAM) that focuses on access initiated outside the organization’s network perimeter.
RPAM solutions typically provide credential vaulting, session brokering, multi-factor authentication (MFA), just-in-time (JIT) access, and session recording, enabling organizations to manage remote privileged sessions without granting full VPN access or exposing internal systems directly to external actors.As organizations adopt remote operations and depend on external vendors to support IT and OT systems, the security of remote privileged access has become a high-stakes concern. Legacy methods like VPNs and jump servers often introduce excessive trust, lateral movement risk, and operational friction.
RPAM emerged to mitigate these risks by enforcing tighter control over who can access what, when, and how, even from remote locations. However, as analysts note, traditional RPAM tools are often IT-centric, built for managing access to enterprise systems (e.g., servers, databases, and cloud apps) but not suitable for critical infrastructure environments with: legacy or proprietary systems, air-gapped or intermittently connected networks, protocols like RDP, SSH, or VNC that require secure mediation.
For Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), RPAM solutions must go beyond credential vaulting to include disconnected access via protocol isolation, and real-time oversight, functions often found in Secure Remote Access (SRA) platforms built for OT.
Xona delivers a CPS-optimized RPAM experience by securing remote privileged access without relying on traditional network-layer trust mechanisms like VPNs, agents, or jump servers. Instead, Xona provides:
In short, Xona turns remote privileged access from a liability into a strength supporting Zero Trust, operational resilience, and compliance in modern critical infrastructure environments.