Providing remote access to anyone—vendors, contractors or the most valued customers—can be very risky business, yet it’s often promoted as a way to help shorten unplanned downtime with remote troubleshooting. One means of risk reduction is two-factor authentication technology, which is designed to enable secure connectivity and future-proof breach prevention across an organization.

Cyber-attacks on industrial control systems (ICSs) are no longer a hypothetical. As pieced together by the Wall Street Journal, in 2017, Russian hackers attacked a small construction company, exploiting the organization’s connections with utilities and government agencies. Through an integrator, the hackers accessed computer-network credentials, giving them the ability to get into computer systems that monitor and control electricity flow.