The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is gaining a stronger foothold as a solution for industrial environments. Some industrial facilities have been using IIoT or similar techniques for more than a decade—longer than the term itself has existed. However, information security has failed to keep abreast with the technological advances in industrial environments.

The challenges around remote access have been known, addressed and managed for what feels like ages. In spite of this, there are regular intervals, new inserts or stories where the remote accesses to critical infrastructure control systems are misused or just poorly managed. So why is remote access to critical infrastructure, or industrial control systems in general hard to achieve?