Trout Software today released Access Gate v26.9, the latest version of its on-premise Zero Trust platform for IT, OT and critical environments. The release is about protecting a site faster: bring the identities you already have, build access rules from whole zones, and close connections as soon as the work is done.
What's new
- Several directories at once: Access Gate now synchronizes Active Directory and LDAP, next to Microsoft 365 (Entra ID) and its own directory. Staff sign in with the corporate directory, while vendors and integrators get accounts in Access Gate, and everyone goes through the same access rules, multi-factor authentication and session reports.
- One search to build access rules: users, groups, assets and zones are found in a single search across every directory, and an entire zone can be added to a rule in one step, so a new site can be protected in less than a day.
- Access control enforced in the kernel: when a rule changes or a task ends, connections the rule no longer allows are closed, including open SMB sessions to file shares.
- Detection of unapproved remote access: built-in rules for unapproved remote-access and screen-sharing tools, firmware downloaded over HTTP, TFTP use, and access from blacklisted IP addresses. Because Access Gate sits in the path of the traffic, each alert describes an action on a specific asset.
- Opt-in Cloud Support: remote support from Trout, reachable only with a support key the customer shares, and health telemetry to a server of the customer's choice.
Enforcing identities in OT environments is tough, because access spans internal users, external vendors and temporary access. This release provides a really elegant solution to that problem: it enforces several identity directories on the wire, so you can quickly control who can do what, and when.
Moving enforcement into the kernel means an access rule is true at every moment, not only when a session starts. When the maintenance task is done, the connection is closed, SMB sessions included.
Availability
Access Gate v26.9 is available now. See the v26.9 release notes for the full list of changes and fixes.