Implicit OT Thursday Thought – Remote Access, Still
Week of 8 April 2026 • 2 min read
Hi Team,
I had a conversation with a site engineer this week who casually mentioned they’d set up a ‘temporary’ internet connection on the production network during the pandemic so the vendor could troubleshoot a PLC/DDC remotely. That was in 2020. They asked if they should probably close it.
Spoiler: they should.
Here’s the uncomfortable bit – we’re not actually that good at this yet. Remote access remains one of the easiest doors attackers use to get into operational systems, and most organisations haven’t properly locked it since the rush to remote work. The problem isn’t the technology. It’s that we treated emergency measures like they’d vanish when normal work came back.
What makes it dangerous is straightforward: a hacker gets one weak credential or finds one of these standing connections, they’re in. From there, they start spreading across your systems. And in OT, that means downtime. Real consequences – fuel supplies interrupt, power goes offline, water systems stop.
The uncomfortable truth is organisations recognise this is a problem but haven’t actually fixed it. They know what needs to happen: inventory what remote access points actually exist, limit them to only what’s needed, lock them down with strong authentication and encryption. Basic housekeeping. But ‘basic’ doesn’t always happen when uptime pressure is real and security budgets move slowly.
Two things worth checking this week:
Do you actually know which remote access points exist in your environment right now? Not what you think exists. What actually exists.
For each one, who has access and do they still need it?
Have a good week,
Damien Pope
News by Others – What caught our eye this week
1. Incident – SANS 2026 report flags cybersecurity skills crisis, putting critical infrastructure and OT sectors at measurable breach risk (Industrial Cyber)
A major new SANS study flips the cybersecurity narrative on its head – the problem isn’t finding enough people, it’s…
2. Vulnerability – Hitachi Energy Ellipse
Hitachi Energy has disclosed a critical vulnerability in its Ellipse software that lets attackers take control of… Read more →
3. Vulnerability – An AI Found 500 Zero-Day Bugs In Open Source Software (and One Exploit That Took 8 Hours)
An AI model called Claude has discovered over 500 previously unknown security flaws in open source software used by… Read more →
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