# Third Party and Vendor Access Management for Critical Infrastructure

- Link: https://www.agilicus.com/case-study/vendor-access-critical-infrastructure/
- Published: 2020-12-24T14:35:40+00:00
- Author: Don Bowman

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CASE STUDY

---

## Third Party and Vendor Access Management for Critical Infrastructure

Located in the heart of one of largest economic regions on the west coast in North
America, our customer is a municipality with a very active industrial and commercial
services sector. The team at the municipality needed to adopt Vendor Access Management
and enforce Multi-Factor Authentication on the SCADA system at their water treatment
facility. With Agilicus AnyX, the team was able to achieve their goals and adopt
a Zero Trust security framework to enable secure access for all internal users and
third party vendors.

[CONTACT](https://www.agilicus.com/contact-us/)

## Vendor Access and Multi-Factor Authentication Enforcement Challenges

Due to their scale of operations, our customer works with third parties to ensure
critical infrastructure resources are operating optimally. However, third parties
and vendors introduce inherited cyber risks for municipalities, which is especially
dangerous for critical infrastructure. 

Our customer set out to introduce multi-factor authentication requirements and Vendor
Access Management for all city resources, including their critical infrastructure.
The SCADA system supporting the water facility had several limitations that interfered
with the adoption of those secure access policies.

[⌊Agilicus Case Study: Secure Vendor Access for Critical Infrastructure. Diagram
illustrating a secure vendor access solution protecting critical infrastructure 
using zero trust principles. Key elements include vendor laptops connecting through
a secure access gateway to segmented critical infrastructure environments, with 
enforced multi-factor authentication and continuous monitoring to prevent unauthorized
access and cyber threats. Learn how Agilicus helps organizations protect their operational
technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) from vendor-related risks. #
VendorAccess #CriticalInfrastructureSecurity #ZeroTrust #OTsecurity #ICSsecurity⌉⌊
Agilicus Case Study: Secure Vendor Access for Critical Infrastructure. Diagram illustrating
a secure vendor access solution protecting critical infrastructure using zero trust
principles. Key elements include vendor laptops connecting through a secure access
gateway to segmented critical infrastructure environments, with enforced multi-factor
authentication and continuous monitoring to prevent unauthorized access and cyber
threats. Learn how Agilicus helps organizations protect their operational technology(
OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) from vendor-related risks. #VendorAccess#
CriticalInfrastructureSecurity #ZeroTrust #OTsecurity #ICSsecurity⌉[

**Budget constraints prevented the IT team from changing the licensing for the SCADA
software to integrate identity into the application.**

[⌊Vendor Access Security for Critical Infrastructure: Securely manage and audit 
vendor access to critical systems with Agilicus. Learn how to reduce risk and maintain
compliance in your organization.⌉⌊Vendor Access Security for Critical Infrastructure:
Securely manage and audit vendor access to critical systems with Agilicus. Learn
how to reduce risk and maintain compliance in your organization.⌉[

**A single, shared login was not acceptable and it was not possible to provide individual
active directory licenses to vendors.**

[⌊Agilicus Case Study: Secure Vendor Access to Critical Infrastructure. Diagram 
illustrates vendor access control flow: Vendor initiates request, Agilicus IDP verifies
identity, grants temporary access to specific resources within the critical infrastructure,
and logs all activity for audit. Prevents unauthorized access and insider threats.⌉⌊
Agilicus Case Study: Secure Vendor Access to Critical Infrastructure. Diagram illustrates
vendor access control flow: Vendor initiates request, Agilicus IDP verifies identity,
grants temporary access to specific resources within the critical infrastructure,
and logs all activity for audit. Prevents unauthorized access and insider threats
.⌉[

**Multi-Factor Authentication was required for access by user groups.**

[⌊Agilicus AnyX enables secure vendor access to critical infrastructure SCADA systems
with multi-factor authentication and Zero Trust security.⌉⌊Agilicus AnyX enables
secure vendor access to critical infrastructure SCADA systems with multi-factor 
authentication and Zero Trust security.⌉[

**Remote access to the SCADA system was a requirement for all internal and external
users.**

It was critical that any solution would provide the Information Technology team 
with precise control over permissions and privileges for such a diverse user group(
internal users, vendors, third parties). A large and costly upgrade of the SCADA
system was simply not possible. The Municipality needed a SaaS solution that could
deliver Vendor Access Management and introduce authentication and authorisation 
as a layer instead of as an add on to the SCADA software integration. 

## Vendor Access Management (VAM) with Agilicus AnyX

The Agilicus AnyX introduces authentication and authorisation policies across user
groups to enable simple access without exposing resources to the public internet.
Our customer seamlessly and affordably enabled secure access for vendor support 
of the SCADA system at the water treatment facility with Agilicus AnyX.

[⌊security-platform-utility⌉⌊security-platform-utility⌉[

### Vendor Access Management

Agilicus AnyX was used to quickly and easily onboard third party vendors without
issuing new accounts or credentials. Fine-grained authorisation is paired with detailed
audit logs, ensuring the team has complete control and visibility over when their
users and vendors are accessing the SCADA system.

[⌊Agilicus All-in-One Zero Trust Network Access platform solution card for insurance
companies.⌉⌊Agilicus All-in-One Zero Trust Network Access platform solution card
for insurance companies.⌉[

### Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication can be enforced on any resource, requiring a second 
factor as part of the login flow to gain access to any designated resource.

[⌊federated-identity⌉⌊federated-identity⌉[

### Federated Identity

Agilicus AnyX federates identity, allowing users from different organisations to
use their individual user ID for access to their permissioned applications. Single
Sign-On delivers a simple end user access experience while the platform works behind
the scenes to unify authentication, putting administrators in full control of who
can onboard into their system.

[⌊security-ease-of-implementation⌉⌊security-ease-of-implementation⌉[

### Centralised Authorisation Management

Through a single pane of glass, administrators can easily add or remove users and
precisely adjust authorisation permissions, whether it’s for an internal employee
or third party vendor.

[⌊vpn-replacement-solution⌉⌊vpn-replacement-solution⌉[

### Identity Aware Web Application Firewall

In addition to the above security The Agilicus AnyX Identity Aware Web Application
firewall makes resources accessible to authorised users without making them visible
on the public internet, where access is only permitted on the basis of authenticated
identity.

Our customer was able to implement Vendor Access Management and enforce multi-factor
authentication to ensure the SCADA system could only be remotely accessed by authorised
users without exposing the water treatment facility to external risks.

### Business Impact

With Agilicus AnyX our customer adopted vendor access management with precise control
of authorisations and permissions across user groups without having to issue new
accounts for their vendors. Precise authorisation controls enabled permissions and
privileges per user, simplifying access without giving up ground on control or visibility
of who was accessing the SCADA system. 

Vendor Access Management was effectively achieved without interrupting water services
for citizens or burdening internal users and third party vendors.

![User-Management-Controls](https://www.agilicus.com/www/c22c5662-cybersecurity-
usermanagement.svg)

**Centralised Authorisation Management for Internal Users and Third Party Vendors**

![role-based-access-controls](https://www.agilicus.com/www/e2df019c-pam-action-plan-
icons_privilege-role-based-access-controls.svg)

**Least Privilege Access Controls and Detailed Audit Logs**

![identity-single-sign-on](https://www.agilicus.com/www/b2778179-pam-action-plan-
icons_identity-sso.svg)

**Remote Access with Enhanced Cyber Resilience**

![federated-identity-login](https://www.agilicus.com/www/dd9a0bf7-pam-action-plan-
icons_federated-login.svg)

**Authentication via Federated Identity and Single Sign-On**

![secure-access](https://www.agilicus.com/www/a26c62bf-cybersecurity-icons_4-securityconvenience.
svg)

**Enforcement of Multi-Factor Authentication**

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