Industries / Mining
OT Cybersecurity for Mining Operations
Crushers, mills, conveyors, and processing plants at remote sites run on SCADA, PLCs, and RTUs that outlast the people who installed them. Potenza brings OEM-independent assessment, documentation, and governance to mining OT, without selling the equipment it assesses.
The exposure
Distance, legacy, and contractors define mining OT risk.
A mine's OT footprint is spread across pits, processing plants, tailings, and camps connected by long-haul links. The equipment is durable, the documentation usually is not, and the number of third parties with a path into the network grows every shutdown.
- 01Legacy SCADA, PLCs, and RTUs with no lifecycle plan
- Control systems commissioned with the plant keep running long after their vendors stop supporting them. Without an inventory of record with lifecycle status, obsolescence is discovered by failure, not by plan.
- 02Flat networks across remote sites
- Radio, microwave, and fiber backhaul often carry corporate, control, and vendor traffic side by side. One flat network across sites means one incident anywhere is an incident everywhere.
- 03Contractor and OEM remote access nobody owns
- Drill, haul, crusher, and process OEMs each bring their own remote path. Shutdown contractors add more. The result is privileged access that persists long after the work order closed.
How we frame it
Zones and conduits that match how a mine actually runs.
Mining OT security has to respect production areas, remote-site autonomy, and the reality that a site may lose its backhaul for hours. We frame every recommendation in Purdue levels and ISA/IEC 62443 zones and conduits, mapped to NIST SP 800-82r3, so it survives an audit and a shift change.
- 01Topology of record per site
- Asset inventory and network diagrams for each pit, plant, and remote facility, including the backhaul, so the link between sites is documented as carefully as the sites themselves.
- 02Segmentation built for degraded links
- Zones by production area and conduits that keep a site's controls operating and protected when the connection to headquarters is down.
- 03Governed access and managed support
- Brokered, logged, least-privilege access for every OEM and contractor, and a managed OT support line so the site is not alone at 3 a.m.
Service path
Where a mining operation usually starts
Remote sites reward a documented baseline first and continuous support second. Each step is a standalone service.
01 / Assess
OT Topology Assessment
Per-site discovery producing your OT asset inventory, network diagrams, and segmentation evidence.
02 / Manage
Managed OT Support
Day-to-day OT operations with an on-call engineer and weekly reporting, for sites without an OT team on shift.
03 / Monitor
OT Network Monitoring
Continuous visibility of industrial traffic across processing plants and remote facilities.
Go deeper
Each service, as it applies to mining
01
OT Topology Assessment for Mining Operations
Per-site inventory that documents the backhaul as carefully as the plant.
02
OT Network Monitoring for Mining Operations
Sensors that keep watching when the backhaul is down, processing plant first.
03
Managed OT Services for Mining Operations
Remote-first response with a defined path for unreachable sites and legacy spares.
04
OT Service Owner for Mining Operations
One access policy and one change record across every site, OEM, and shutdown contractor.
FAQ
Questions mining operators ask
The short answers. Longer ones come from a conversation about your specific sites. Reach out to our team.
Three ways: the site must keep operating safely when its backhaul is down, so controls cannot depend on a central service; equipment lifecycles are measured in decades, so obsolescence is the norm; and many third parties hold remote paths in. Segmentation, inventory, and governed access have to be designed for all three.
Usually, yes. Segmentation, governed access, and monitoring reduce the exposure of equipment that cannot be patched. Replacement is a lifecycle decision made from an inventory of record, not a prerequisite for security.
ISA/IEC 62443 for zones, conduits, and security levels; NIST SP 800-82r3 for OT-specific guidance; and NIST CSF 2.0 for program governance. Where a jurisdiction adds sector rules, they map onto the same baseline.
Yes, and independently of them. Potenza has no equipment to sell, so it can govern OEM and contractor access on the operator's behalf without a conflict of interest. Existing tooling is assessed and integrated rather than replaced by default.
Get Started
Start with one site
Tell us how many sites you run, how they connect, and which OEMs and contractors currently hold remote access. We'll come back with a scoped assessment proposal, not a sales deck.
What you'll get
- OT asset inventory with lifecycle status per site
- Network diagrams including inter-site backhaul
- Contractor and OEM access map
- A segmentation plan built for degraded connectivity
Prefer email? helpdesk@potenzaservices.com