Zscaler Private Access (ZPA/ZPRA) vs. XONA for OT/CI Comparison Guide

This guide compares the two company’s solutions according to key criteria required by critical infrastructure (CI) organizations and the employees, and 3rd-party operators they need to enable/support. This includes minimizing operational cost and complexity, providing frictionless access (local/remote) to operational technology (OT) assets, and protecting the data streams and OT protocols used to access those OT assets.

The comparison highlights the difference between a self-contained and hardened secure user access solution (XONA) and one that requires a client application for each “managed” end-point device, on-premises agent(s), two different cloud-based solutions, and a cloud-based identity provider (IdP).

In this paper, you will learn about secure user access for OT/CI in the context of:

  • Why safety & reliability, productivity, security, and compliance matters.
  • The importance of a solution purpose-built for OT/CI.
  • How ease and speed of deployment, manageability, usability, and impact on network complexity are key variables in minimizing operational costs and complexity.
  • Security based on a zero-trust ‘least privilege’ model, and the ability to protect data streams and OT protocols.
  • Minimizing the potential for any cyber risk to be introduced into your trusted OT environment.
  • Supporting secondary capabilities such as user monitoring, secure file transfers, etc.

Choosing the Right Secure User Access Solution for Operational Technology

When evaluating secure user access for OT/CI one should look for solutions that can reduce the cost and complexity of administering safe, secure, and reliable access, while reducing mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) and improving uptime and reliability. A XONA comparison to Xage highlights the difference between a self-contained and purpose-built solution for OT/CI, and one that requires a cloud to effectively address complexity and risk.

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