Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

On April 28, 2025, a massive power outage affected large areas of the Iberian Peninsula and parts of southern France. Traffic lights, elevators, point-of-sale systems, and many mobile phone and internet networks suddenly stopped functioning. Subways and parts of the rail network ground to a halt. Industrial production and numerous service businesses were interrupted for several hours to a full day.

Critical infrastructure systems, such as power plants, water treatment plants, transportation networks, and factories, depend on operational technology (OT) to work. OT systems are designed to manage physical devices and processes, while traditional IT systems primarily focus on protecting data and information. Because of this difference, OT security is complex, especially as OT networks are increasingly linked to IT networks, making them more vulnerable to cyber threats.

Operational Technology (OT) security safeguards the industrial systems, networks, and physical processes that power modern society. Unlike Information Technology (IT), which prioritizes data confidentiality, OT security focuses on the availability, reliability, and safety of physical operations, protecting the technology behind turbines, robotic arms, pumps, and pipeline valves.

COMMENTARY: When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran on February 28, the security community mobilized around the visible response. I’ve watched that response for two weeks: teams tracking hacktivist DDoS campaigns, incident counts climbing, news coverage following close behind.

At Fal.Con Gov 2026, CrowdStrike is introducing new innovations to accelerate modernization and strengthen cyber defense of government systems, while helping agencies meet some of the most rigorous compliance standards within a FedRAMP-authorized environment. Cybersecurity is national security. Ransomware threatens public safety and continuity of operations. Supply chain compromise multiplies impact. Nation-state actors target critical infrastructure for strategic disruption.

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.

TL;DR Xona Platform v5.5 strengthens remote access across distributed OT environments. It introduces session resilience to maintain continuity during network interruptions, expands centralized governance for more consistent access control, and enhances support for constrained or disconnected deployments. In critical infrastructure environments, remote access is not abstract. It supports maintenance windows, emergency response, vendor coordination, and day-to-day operations across distributed sites.

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.

The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an alert this week based on an attack that struck Poland’s energy sector in late 2025. The attack compromised the operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) in 30 renewable energy and heating plants, impacting 500,000 people and also that nation’s manufacturing sector.

Security incidents and service disruptions are never simple. They are rarely the result of a single mistake, and they don’t only happen to organizations that “did something wrong.” In reality, many of the most capable, well-resourced companies experience them precisely because they operate at scale, under constant pressure, and within complex, interconnected environments.