Case Study

How a Major Midstream Oil & Gas Company Secured Remote Access in Hours – For TSA Security Directive Compliance

Executive Summary

A leading midstream oil and gas company faced a growing challenge: securing remote access to critical infrastructure while complying with new TSA-SD-2E security directives. Their existing remote access tools struggled with low-bandwidth environments, making secure connectivity unreliable at times. With strict compliance deadlines and operational risks at stake, they needed a seamless, regulatory-compliant solution—fast. They chose Xona for its application of zero-trust security principles, rapid deployment, and ability to operate smoothly in bandwidth-limited conditions.

The Challenge

A midstream oil and gas company needed to strengthen its remote access to its critical infrastructure and meet the stringent TSA-SD-2E – which required stricter remote access controls, real-time authentication, and rapid response capabilities in the event of a security incident. Managing 20 distributed sites with varying network conditions, the company needed a solution to meet these regulatory requirements, enhance operational efficiency and perform reliably in low-bandwidth environments.

Their Key Challenges Included:

  • Regulatory Compliance – The company sought to align with TSA-SD-2E requirements by implementing secure, auditable access controls without disrupting daily operations.
  • Seamless Remote Access – Their teams needed to quickly and securely connect to critical infrastructure across all sites—regardless of bandwidth constraints.
  • Zero-Trust Enforcement – With users occasionally sharing assets, the company wanted to ensure that every session was authenticated, eliminating cached credential risks, and strengthening security.
  • Operational Resilience – The ability to instantly disable access in case of a cybersecurity event was essential to protecting their infrastructure without impacting productivity.

By selecting Xona, the company found a partner aligned with its mission: to secure critical infrastructure while enabling seamless, high-performance remote operations. The result was a future-proof access strategy that empowered IT and OT teams with the security, agility, and control needed to navigate an evolving regulatory landscape.

Industry: Oil and Gas

Midstream oil and gas infrastructure company

XONA Platform Deployment

Gathering and transmission pipelines, compressor stations, and other related facilities

XONA Key Benefits

  • Secures Remote Access that Adheres to TSA Security Directives
  • Applies Zero Trust Principles with Enforcement of User Authentication Across Shared Assets
  • Delivers a Seamless User Experience across Low-Bandwidth Networks

The XONA Solution

The customer selected Xona to address their remote access security and regulatory compliance needs. Unlike traditional VPN-based remote access, which struggles in bandwidth-limited environments and exposes assets to insecure endpoints, Xona’s platform ensures secure, low-latency access without requiring infrastructure changes. Further, with its protocol isolation and centralized access control, Xona eliminates the risks associated with VPNs and jump servers while ensuring full TSA-SD-2E compliance.

Xona’s ability to address the TSA-SD-2E requirements and the platform’s simplicity of administration and operation was a significant advantage for the customer’s distributed sites.

The Xona deployment was a smooth process, with the customer getting the solution up and running across their 20 sites in just a few hours. After deployment, the customer could securely reach multiple sites without issues.

Soon after deployment, the Xona team collaborated with the customer on a feature to reconfigure their SSO solution to ensure users were always prompted to authenticate their credentials. With users sometimes sharing assets, users needed to enter their specific information instead of using cached credentials. This ensures adherence to a zero-trust approach that continuously authenticates and validates access to critical infrastructure and assets.

Xona’s centralized access management capabilities have been a major benefit for the customer. They can now quickly provision, monitor, and terminate user access to critical assets, ensuring compliance with TSA-SD-2E standards. Additionally, Xona’s ability to operate reliably in low-bandwidth environments has been paramount for the customer, who had struggled with previous remote access solutions and their performance limitations in limited bandwidth conditions.

THE XONA DIFFERENCE

Secures Remote Access that Adheres to TSA Security Directives

The Xona Platform provides comprehensive security capabilities to meet TSA-SD-2E requirements that call for local and remote access control measures to secure and prevent unauthorized access to critical infrastructure. The customer can easily and quickly access critical assets both remotely and locally from any device without plug-ins, agents, or clients.

Applies Zero Trust Principles with Enforcement of User Authentication Across Shared Assets

Xona applies the Zero Trust “never trust, always verify” approach in its platform to protect critical assets and data. The Xona Platform can be integrated with a customer’s chosen SSO solution – which can be configured to require constant validation of all access privileges to protect the organization and its critical infrastructure.

Delivers a Seamless User Experience across Low-Bandwidth Networks

Xona provides a responsive and smooth user experience, even in low bandwidth environments common in the oil and gas industry. The customer can connect in seconds to access and operate their critical assets in real-time to boost their operational efficiency and overall security posture.

Customer Testimonials

“Xona worked closely with us to enhance our single sign-on solution, ensuring continuous authentication when users are on shared workstations. This capability wasn’t originally in their product scope, but they adapted to our needs – showing their commitment to our security and compliance.”
- IT/OT Manager
“The centralized access management capabilities of Xona have been essential for meeting our TSA Security Directive compliance requirements and protecting our critical infrastructure. We can now quickly disconnect remote access in the event of a cybersecurity incident without disrupting overall operations.”
- IT/OT Sr. Systems Administrator
“Xona's ability to operate reliably in our low-bandwidth environments has been crucial for our distributed sites. It's allowed us to maintain secure remote access without compromising performance.”
- Systems Engineering Specialist

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