Securing remote access at the industrial enterprise edge

Securing remote access at the industrial enterprise edge

With Hannover Messe 2026 around the corner, industry leaders are preparing to see how the latest technological innovations address their critical challenges and accelerate strategic goals. And at Nokia Enterprise Campus Edge (ECE), we are also gearing up to bring those innovations to life at the event and showcase how our private wireless and AI-powered edge-driven solutions tackle those industrial pain points.

The growing cybersecurity concerns at the edge

One of the fastest-growing challenges, as enterprises accelerate digital transformation, is securing remote access to the operational technology (OT) edge. More nodes, systems, applications, and devices are deployed to support Industry 4.0 use cases, including predictive maintenance, autonomous robots and vehicles, and digital twins. As a result, the edge is rapidly becoming the critical nerve center of the industrial enterprise. This, in turn, is driving a surge in users requiring remote access, including third-party vendors and partners.

It’s why we’ve partnered with leading Finnish defensive security company, SSH Communications Security (SSH). Using a purpose-built solution, called PrivX OT, on Nokia ECE MX Industrial Edge (MXIE), we’re providing enterprises with greater control and visibility to govern vendor access to their OT systems and data.

Why is this so important? Let’s look at the example of a manufacturing facility and its industry digitalization use cases that include the connected worker, digital work instructions, automation, including AGVs and AMRs, digital twins, predictive maintenance, remote diagnostics and more. As these use cases are deployed, secure remote access requests increase, including from the following:

• Maintenance contractors must identify early warning signs of machine failures to inform predictive maintenance, schedule windows and reduce the potential for downtime.
• Equipment vendors need to monitor equipment health to identify root cause analysis or tweak parameters, to improve, but not adversely impact operations.
• System integrators require visibility into data flows, interfaces and protocols and need to understand interactions as they deploy legacy and modern systems from multiple vendors.
• IT contractors must deliver updates and security patches to maintain performance.

While these and other external users rarely require unrestricted access to industrial systems, the sheer volume of access introduces significant risks.  It increases the enterprise attack surface, giving cybercriminals more opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities.

Phishing attacks, for example, can be employed to compromise third-party credentials, providing an entry point into the environment. Even when those credentials are linked to low-risk systems, attackers can move laterally to reach more critical assets. At the same time, user error and overprivileged access permissions can increase the likelihood of misconfigurations, data breaches, and operational disruption.

The increasing cost of data breaches

Many companies are counting the cost of real-world security breaches. The Target breach saw attackers move laterally to access payment systems via a HVAC vendor, costing the company more than $200 million. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack saw criminals access a system using a compromised password for an inactive VPN account, which didn’t have multifactor authentication enabled. That disrupted gas supply and led to a $4.4 million ransom payment. A 2024 IBM report found that the average cost of a data breach was US$ 5.56 million in the industrial sector, with just an hour of downtime costing a manufacturer up to $125,000.

The impact goes far beyond ransom payments. In busy environments such as manufacturing plants, ports, airports, and warehouses, lost productivity, service level agreement (SLA) breaches, and legal costs can be severe. As industrial use cases scale, we wanted to help organizations secure third-party remote access and allow users to provide critical services without increasing cybersecurity risks.

Partnering to secure remote access at the edge

We introduced MXIE to address the growing complexity of industrial digitalization and support enterprises as their needs scale. By delivering on-site compute, powered by private wireless and AI, MXIE provides the low-latency, high bandwidth, and processing performance required for modern industrial use cases. With data processed on-site, organizations gain greater control, visibility, and governance, as well as the ability to manage myriad diverse applications across network layers from a single platform.

Now, by integrating PrivX OT on MXIE, factories, mines, ports, airports, and other industrial enterprises can also gain greater visibility and control over remote access to their critical systems and data at the edge. PrivX OT provides secure outbound connectivity to MXIE without exposing ports beyond the firewall and enforces least privileged access to the edge in the following ways:

• Controlled vendor and contractor access: Third-party users are given just enough access, just in time, to only the systems that they need. This limits the potential for user error to compromise OT data in other parts of the network and for supply chain attacks to spread laterally to other critical systems.
• Time-bound access for Maintenance Window Operations: Access is granted for a limited time, based on the task being performed and is automatically revoked once that time has elapsed.

Shared credentials are replaced with secure sessions linked to individual identities. They are timed to align with maintenance windows and are constantly reevaluated. Sessions are monitored and traceable for audit trails and governance.

PrivX OT evidence-based activity aligns with global-based IEC 62443 and EU NIS2 cybersecurity governance models. Further, when using a FIPS 140-3 validated cryptographic module (CMVP), it adheres to strict government-recognized security requirements, allowing organizations in highly regulated environments to more easily pass procurement checks. 

Our new integrated solution is already helping our existing industrial enterprise customers secure third-party remote access to the edge at scale. And at Hannover Messe 2026, we’ll showcase how your enterprise can benefit. Visit us at Stand J54 in Hall 14 from 20-24 April to discover how you can leverage this and other innovative Nokia ECE solutions to overcome your challenges and unlock new value.

Resources

MX Industrial Edge | Nokia

SSH PrivX OT