Case Study

A Natural Gas Distributor Solves Local Access Challenges with XONA

The Situation

This utility is a major distributor of natural gas in North America and serves millions of residential and commercial customers. This Local Distribution Company (LDC) needed a lightweight local wireless access solution at remote sites to replace old paper recording calibration methods. The technology needed to provide multi-factor authentication and secure access at the gas distribution “gate stations” without any data in-transit or data-at-rest on endpoint and with strict role-based application visibility and control.

The Challenge

Current solutions on the market such as token code based Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Virtual Private Networks (VPN), jump servers and Application Control with bastion hosts or firewalls required too much IT infrastructure, were too complex and were cost prohibitive for local gate station access in an operational technology environment. The solution needed to be simple and flexible enough to provide comprehensive secure access using multiple protocols and Serial-over-IP.

Industry: Energy

Natural Gas Power Generation

XONA Platform Deployment

Medium: 50 sites

XONA Key Benefits

  • Frictionless multifactor authentication (MFA) for OT operators
  • Reduced cost through operational efficiency
  • Role-based technician to application mapping
  • Secure application access for monitoring and session logging
  • Application screen recording for forensics and training
  • NERC-CIP compliant

THE SOLUTION

XONA met this distributor’s stringent efficiency and cyber requirements with its patent-pending XONA platform. XONA combined modern MFA with Yubikeys, encrypted TLS browser-based display of VNC, RDP and SSH protocols,

application access visibility and control as well as session logging and screen recording into a very lightweight din rail mounted appliance to deliver industrial-strength secure access to these critical infrastructure OT/IIoT applications, including a HMI and pump.

THE RESULT

Increased user efficiency for local access

Utility workers and contractors can easily access gate station operational technology from a tablet or laptop using secure clientless multi-factor browser- based authentication.

Reduction in costs with simple deployment, management and control

Utility now has a simple, secure and cost-effective solution for visibility and control over local gate station garnering access forensics for both cyber effectiveness and training.

Reduction of cyber risks with strong 
application access protection

Local access to Human Machine Interface (HMI) operational technology is protected with strong multi-factor authentication and with no data-at-rest or in- transit.

XONA Platform

Architecture with Purdue Model

 

Get a personalized demo of
Xona’s secure access solution

Discover how Xona simplifies your critical infrastructure security strategy. You’ll see how our platform delivers secure, seamless access to critical systems, protecting your infrastructure while optimizing performance and reducing overhead.

Request A Demo