All analysis was generated autonomously, without human review. Scores are analytical opinions drawn from the cited public sources, without hands-on testing. They are not audits, certifications, investment reports, purchasing advice, or evaluations of quality.
Xona, founded in 2017, sells secure remote access for engineers and contractors who work on the industrial control systems of critical-infrastructure operators. Its Critical System Gateway appliance brokers each session, so the user's device never becomes part of the control network. Xona's named customers include GE Vernova, RWE, Baker Hughes, AltaGas, Egyptian LNG, Mitsubishi Corporation and Trane. Xona has raised $32 million, including an $18 million round in 2024 led by Energy Impact Partners. KuppingerCole named Xona an Overall Leader in its 2025 report on secure remote access for industrial systems. Palo Alto Networks, which ranked first overall in that report, could win operators that prefer to extend an existing network-security vendor into industrial sites.
| Description | Xona provides secure remote access for operational technology and critical infrastructure, brokering protocol-isolated sessions to OT systems so user endpoints never join the OT network. | [f1] |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2017 | [f2] |
| HQ | Hanover, Maryland, United States | [f3] |
| Funding | $32M total | [f4] |
| Latest funding | $18M strategic round (led by Energy Impact Partners) | [f4] |
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| Xona Platform | Secure access platform that brokers protocol-isolated sessions to OT and ICS assets over RDP, VNC, SSH, and web interfaces, with MFA, session enforcement, and Active Defense. |
| Critical System Gateway | On-site gateway appliance that terminates and isolates OT protocols and enforces user access to control-system assets without extending the network to the endpoint. |
Cyber Defense Matrix
| Identify | Protect | Detect | Respond | Recover | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devices Workstations, servers, phones, tablets, storage, network devices, IoT infrastructure, and similar hardware. | |||||
| Applications Software, interactions, and application flows on the devices. | |||||
| Networks Connections and traffic flowing among devices and apps, plus communication paths. | |||||
| Data Content at rest, in transit, or in use across devices, apps, and networks. | |||||
| Users The people using the devices, apps, networks, and data. |
The Xona Platform brokers protocol-isolated remote access to industrial control systems, terminating OT protocols at its gateway and enforcing identity checks and multi-factor authentication. It defends conventional OT networks, devices, applications, and users and maps to the Cyber Defense Matrix. [f1]
How well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence.
| Dimension | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Problem Clarity How precisely the company defines its problem, with evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. | 4/5 | Xona names its buyers, the OT security, SCADA operations and compliance teams that must let vendors and contractors reach control systems. Its platform page cites At-Bay’s figure that remote access tools were the initial entry point in 80% of 2024 ransomware attacks. Independent sources frame the same problem, since a 2026 joint CISA advisory recommends an MFA gateway for remote access to programmable logic controllers and KuppingerCole’s analyst calls secure remote access a foundational element of industrial cybersecurity. [s8, s1, s12, s16] |
| Capability Depth How specific the technical capabilities are, with evidence beyond marketing claims such as docs and third-party validation. | 3/5 | Xona’s platform page documents the design in detail, from identity-provider sign-in and protocol termination at the gateway to session recording. KuppingerCole rated vendors from briefings and a questionnaire, and the cited Gartner review covers contractor access and usability, so neither is the third-party technical evaluation or customer technical writeup a higher score needs. [s1, s16, s13, s14] |
| Market Timing Whether the market is ready for this product, with evidence that buyers are actively seeking solutions. | 4/5 | Three buyer-side signal kinds from independent sources fall within the last twelve months. CISA’s advisory AA26-097A of April 7, 2026 is a government driver urging MFA gateways for remote access to PLCs. KuppingerCole’s inaugural Leadership Compass, presented on December 3, 2025, is an analyst category note, and an April 13, 2026 Gartner Peer Insights review from an energy and utilities IT manager is a buyer’s own account. [s12, s16, s13] |
| Team Credibility Demonstrated domain expertise with public signals such as prior exits, publications, and industry recognition. | 3/5 | Founder and CEO Bill Moore started building Xona in late 2017 with longtime engineering partner Pete Gregel, and a named CFO, CRO and chief product officer support him. The reviewed sources show Xona as the one in-domain product the founders built, with no prior exit or sustained publication record. [s8, s7] |
| GTM Proof Evidence of actual traction (customers, revenue signals, partnerships) beyond stated intentions. | 5/5 | KuppingerCole analyst Warwick Ashford says the leaders in his Leadership Compass reached strong market positions through broad customer adoption, large-scale deployments, global reach and mature partner ecosystems, and he places Xona among the leaders in all the graphs (s16). A Gartner Peer Insights reviewer says all external contractors or OEMs must use the product to connect (s13). An analyst placement tied to adoption, plus public customer testimony, meets rung 5. The placement rests on vendor briefings and a questionnaire, and no source gives Xona's revenue or customer count. [s16, s13] |
| Funding Efficiency Whether funding matches go-to-market ambition, with signs of capital-efficient growth. | 3/5 | Xona has raised $32 million in staged rounds since 2020, most recently an $18 million strategic round led by Energy Impact Partners in June 2024. It kept shipping after that round, with Platform v5.5 in February 2026 and Active Defense in March 2026, while no revenue or growth figure confirms its output per dollar. [s7, s3, s4, s5] |
| Category Clarity Whether the company creates or fits a recognizable category that buyers can quickly place in their stack. | 4/5 | Gartner Peer Insights lists the Xona Platform in its CPS Secure Remote Access market, and KuppingerCole covered Xona in its Leadership Compass on secure remote access for OT and ICS. That report puts Palo Alto Networks first in the overall leadership graph and Xona among the leaders that follow, so Xona is one recognized leader in a category several vendors lead. [s13, s14, s16] |
| Incumbent Defensibility How vulnerable the core value proposition is to absorption as a feature by a platform vendor. | 3/5 | A customer replacing Xona would need to migrate user-to-asset policies and contractor access. A Gartner Peer Insights reviewer says all external contractors and OEMs must connect through Xona. Palo Alto Networks already leads KuppingerCole’s overall graph for the same category, and the reviewed sources show no data flywheel or other moat that bundling could not reproduce. [s1, s13, s16] |
Xona sells secure remote access to critical-infrastructure operators that must let engineers, equipment makers and contractors reach control systems. Its about page names OT security, SCADA operations, network, compliance and audit teams, and teams managing third-party access as its primary audiences. Founder Bill Moore tied the company’s 2024 hiring plans to energy, oil and gas, manufacturing and government partners.
Independent sources document the threat and the regulatory pressure behind that demand. A joint CISA advisory, first published in April 2026, reports actors disrupting programmable logic controllers (PLCs) across US critical infrastructure. Where remote access to those controllers is required, the advisory recommends a gateway or VPN that enforces multi-factor authentication (MFA). In a December 2025 webinar, KuppingerCole’s Warwick Ashford said secure remote access had grown from a niche capability into a foundational element of industrial cybersecurity. He cited IEC 62443 among the standards that require auditable remote access. [s8, s3, s12, s16]
The Xona Platform brokers each remote session through an on-site gateway, so the user’s device never joins the OT network. Users sign in through the organization’s identity provider or Xona’s own authentication tool before reaching any OT system. The Critical System Gateway then terminates the RDP, VNC, SSH or web protocol, and Xona Central Management administers the gateways centrally.
Recent releases target unreliable networks and live response. Platform v5.5, released in February 2026, added Session Hold and RDP Auto-Reconnect to keep a session alive through brief connectivity loss. Active Defense, launched in March 2026, takes detection signals from OT asset-visibility platforms. It responds inside the session with step-up authentication, suspension, scoped access restrictions or termination.
Xona records and logs every session, with searchable metadata and evidence customers can export for audits. It deploys on premises or self-hosted without endpoint agents, and its platform page states a deployment time of 30 minutes per site. [s1, s3, s4, s5]
Xona competes against several purpose-built rivals in an analyst-recognized category. Its platform page names Cyolo, Dispel, Xage and Wallix as vendors buyers compare it with. KuppingerCole’s 2025 Leadership Compass on secure remote access for OT and ICS placed Xona among the leaders in every graph it published.
Network-security and privileged-access vendors compete for the same purchase. KuppingerCole’s analyst put Palo Alto Networks first in the report’s overall leadership graph.
Xona’s integration partners work with the same buyer. Its gateway runs Nozomi Networks’ Arc Endpoint Sensor to discover assets. Its Forescout integration lets Forescout’s risk scoring change access permissions and session behavior inside Xona. [s1, s16, s13, s6, s18]
Xona names customers on two of its own pages. Its homepage lists GE Vernova, RWE, Egyptian LNG, AltaGas and Baker Hughes under the heading “Trusted by Critical Infrastructure and Industrial Leaders.” Its SafeBase trust center adds Mitsubishi Corporation, Aluar and Trane among the organizations that reviewed and trusted it.
Third parties add corroboration in their own voices. KuppingerCole’s analyst described the report’s market leaders as vendors with broad customer adoption, large-scale deployments, global reach and mature partner ecosystems. He placed Xona among the leaders in all of the report’s graphs. Gartner Peer Insights shows 11 ratings averaging 4.8. An April 2026 reviewer there, an energy and utilities IT manager, says all external contractors and OEMs must connect through Xona.
Partnerships and channels extend the motion. Xona announced a certified integration with Nozomi Networks in February 2025 and a partnership with Forescout in June 2025. Its Platform v5.5 release quotes Barrier Networks as a Xona managed security service partner, and Carahsoft, a government IT solutions provider, has a Xona team. Xona’s own release says it is deployed in more than 40 countries.
Xona raised its capital in staged rounds. A $7.2 million Series A led by DataTribe in May 2022 brought its total to $9.4 million. An $18 million strategic round led by Energy Impact Partners in June 2024 brought the total to $32 million. An SEC Form D for Xona Systems, Inc. reports $19,026,905 sold in an offering whose first sale was May 28, 2024. The filing covers Series A-1 preferred stock and notes converted into Series A-2 preferred stock. [s2, s20, s16, s13, s6, s18, s4, s21, s7, s3, s11]
Founder and CEO Bill Moore started Xona in late 2017. A SCADA supervisor described an access problem to Moore when he was at Washington Gas. Moore then built an early prototype with his longtime engineering partner, Pete Gregel. SecurityWeek’s 2022 funding report also dates the founding to 2017.
A named executive bench supports Moore. Xona’s about page lists a chief financial officer, a chief revenue officer and chief product officer Raed Albuliwi, who speaks for the company on its 2026 releases. KuppingerCole invited Moore to discuss the market in its December 2025 webinar on the Leadership Compass. The reviewed sources show no earlier company Moore built or sold and no sustained publication record, so Moore’s track record in those sources is Xona itself. [s8, s7, s4, s5, s16]
Xona publishes its security posture through a SafeBase trust center. The trust center lists a SOC 2 Type 2 report and documents such as penetration testing, which buyers request through the center. Its certifications page states SOC 2 Type II compliance under AICPA Trust Services Criteria.
Xona’s other compliance claims map product features to OT regulations. The certifications page says the platform was third-party tested with mappings to several NERC CIP standards. It also claims alignment with ISA/IEC 62443 and NIST 800-53. These are Xona’s own statements, and the SOC 2 report itself requires an access request. [s20, s19, s1]
| Company | Relationship | Note | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cyolo | competes with | Xona’s platform page names Cyolo among the vendors buyers compare it with for OT and ICS secure remote access. | |
| Dispel | competes with | Xona’s platform page names Dispel among the vendors buyers compare it with for OT and ICS secure remote access. | |
| Xage Security | competes with | Xona’s platform page names Xage among the vendors buyers compare it with for secure remote access. | |
| Palo Alto Networks | competes with | KuppingerCole’s analyst placed Palo Alto Networks first in the overall leadership graph of the same 2025 Leadership Compass that named Xona a leader. | N/AWe scored these companies at different scopes, so the totals measure different things. |
| Claroty | competes with | Competes for the same industrial operators’ OT security budget, an adjacent purchase for buyers of Xona’s remote access. | |
| Dragos | competes with | Competes for the same industrial operators’ OT security budget, an adjacent purchase for buyers of Xona’s remote access. | N/AWe captured the evidence for these companies under different evidence-model versions (v1 vs v2), so the totals were scored under different conditions and are not directly comparable. |
Add analyzed competitors to compare them side by side with Xona.
A closer look at the company's product strategy, measuring how defensible it is against market forces and examining the eight areas behind it.
reinforce or reposition
Xona's on-site gateway brokers every remote session, so a customer that leaves has to rebuild its permissions for each user elsewhere. A Gartner Peer Insights reviewer in energy and utilities says all outside contractors and equipment makers must connect through Xona, so leaving also means moving all of them. Customers host Xona themselves and keep their own session records. Xona describes no data it pools across customers. Palo Alto Networks already sells remote access for industrial systems, while Nozomi Networks and Forescout, which integrate their industrial monitoring tools with Xona, could add their own.
| Dimension | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Value Delivery Does the product sell software as the product, or judgment, trust, or accountability with software as the delivery mechanism. | 1/3 | Xona sells a gateway appliance and central management software that customers run on premises or self-host, licensed per appliance, per asset or by annual subscription. The customer’s team operates it and owns the outcomes, and Active Defense is automated enforcement inside the product. |
| Switching Cost How expensive leaving is for a customer: data portability, integrations, learned workflows, network effects, regulatory data residency. | 2/3 | Xona’s gateways hold each customer’s user-to-asset authorizations, and a Gartner Peer Insights reviewer says all external contractors and OEMs connect through it, so leaving means rebuilding those policies and moving contractor access. Session evidence is exportable, and the cited record does not size the migration. |
| Compliance Moat Whether certifications, liability acceptance, or audit trails block an easy replacement. | 1/3 | Xona holds a SOC 2 Type 2 report and states alignment with NERC CIP, IEC 62443 and NIST controls. Those regimes name no vendor and a funded rival can earn the same attestation, so compliance drives demand for the category without blocking a replacement of Xona. |
| Problem Complexity Whether the product requires ML, optimization, real-time systems, or years of specialized expertise. | 2/3 | Xona’s engineering covers protocol termination across RDP, VNC, SSH and web interfaces, session continuity over low-bandwidth links, FIPS-compliant cryptography and policy-driven responses to outside detection signals. That is non-trivial integration work, and the reviewed sources describe no machine learning or optimization at the product’s core. |
| Buyer Profile Whether buyers are SMB operators, mid-market IT teams, or regulated enterprises and governments with procurement gates. | 3/3 | Xona sells to critical-infrastructure and industrial operators, naming GE Vernova, RWE, Egyptian LNG, AltaGas and Baker Hughes as customers and marketing NERC CIP, IEC 62443 and TSA alignment. A Xona team at Carahsoft, a government IT solutions provider, gives it a route to government buyers. |
| Layer Whether the product is an end-user application, a platform with application features, or infrastructure other applications depend on. | 3/3 | Xona’s Critical System Gateway sits in the path of every remote session it brokers, authenticating and authorizing each user before the user reaches any OT system and terminating the RDP, VNC, SSH or web protocol itself. A Gartner Peer Insights reviewer says all external contractors and OEMs must connect through Xona, which shows that dependence for the remote-access traffic routed through the gateway. |
| Proprietary Data, Content, or IP Whether the product accumulates datasets, content licenses, or IP that a rival cannot recreate from scratch. | 1/3 | The reviewed sources contain no granted patent, licensed content or vendor-retained dataset. Carahsoft describes Xona’s protocol isolation as proprietary. Session recordings and access logs are each customer’s records, kept in deployments the customer runs or self-hosts, and the reviewed sources show no asset Xona accumulates across customers. |
Xona sells to operators of critical infrastructure and industrial sites. Its homepage lists GE Vernova, RWE, Egyptian LNG, AltaGas and Baker Hughes as customers, and its trust center adds Mitsubishi Corporation, Aluar and Trane. Founder Bill Moore tied the company’s 2024 hiring plans to its energy, oil and gas, manufacturing and government partners.
Xona sells to several teams inside each buyer. Its about page names OT security, SCADA operations, network, compliance and audit teams, and teams managing third-party access as its primary audiences. Government buyers can reach Xona through Carahsoft, a government IT solutions provider with a Xona team. Xona’s own release says the platform is deployed in more than 40 countries.
The Xona Platform brokers each remote session through its own gateway, so a user’s device never receives network access to OT systems. Users sign in through the organization’s identity provider or Xona’s own tool before reaching any OT asset. The Critical System Gateway terminates RDP, VNC, SSH and web protocols, and Xona Central Management administers the gateways.
Active Defense, launched in March 2026, responds to threats inside a live session. It takes detection signals from OT asset-visibility platforms and applies step-up authentication, session suspension, scoped access restrictions or termination. It also escalates when several lower-severity events add up.
Xona’s pages present AI as a reason for its design. The platform page says AI makes it easier for attackers to find internet-exposed systems, and Xona’s answer is to keep OT systems off the public internet.
Xona names customers on its homepage and in its trust center. The homepage lists GE Vernova, RWE, Egyptian LNG, AltaGas and Baker Hughes under the heading “Trusted by Critical Infrastructure and Industrial Leaders.” The trust center adds Mitsubishi Corporation, Aluar and Trane among the organizations that reviewed and trusted it.
Independent sources corroborate its market position in their own voices. KuppingerCole’s analyst placed Xona among the leaders in every graph of the 2025 Leadership Compass on secure remote access for OT and ICS, market leadership included. Gartner Peer Insights shows 11 ratings averaging 4.8. An April 2026 reviewer there from energy and utilities says all external contractors and OEMs must connect through Xona.
Partnerships and capital reinforce the motion. Xona announced a certified integration with Nozomi Networks in February 2025 and a partnership with Forescout in June 2025, and its Platform v5.5 release quotes Barrier Networks as a managed security service partner. Xona raised an $18 million strategic round led by Energy Impact Partners in June 2024, bringing its total to $32 million. An SEC Form D for Xona Systems, Inc. reports $19,026,905 sold in an offering whose first sale was May 28, 2024.
Xona prices per gateway appliance, with per-asset and subscription options. Its product profile on Gartner Peer Insights says Xona licenses each gateway appliance by capacity and deployment size. The same profile lists licensing per asset and per time period through annual subscriptions.
Xona publishes no price list on its homepage or platform page, which route buyers to a scheduled call with a specialist.
Xona delivers gateway appliances that customers run on premises or self-host, administered through Xona Central Management. Customers deploy it without endpoint agents or network redesign, and it supports legacy systems. Xona’s platform page states a deployment time of 30 minutes per site.
Xona builds the product for degraded industrial networks. It lists session continuity through transient interruptions, automatic reconnection and predictable performance over low-bandwidth, high-latency links. Platform v5.5 added Session Hold and RDP Auto-Reconnect, and Active Defense adds real-time enforcement inside sessions.
Xona publishes its security posture through a SafeBase trust center that lists a SOC 2 Type 2 report and documents such as penetration testing. Its certifications page states SOC 2 Type II compliance under AICPA Trust Services Criteria. The SOC 2 report itself requires an access request.
Xona maps its product to OT regulations in its own words. The certifications page says the platform was third-party tested with mappings to several NERC CIP standards, and it claims alignment with ISA/IEC 62443 and NIST 800-53. Its design keeps the user’s device off the OT network, which answers the endpoint-exposure concern a remote access tool raises.
Xona integrates with the OT visibility and identity tools its buyers already run. Its gateway runs Nozomi Networks’ Arc Endpoint Sensor, which discovers assets for onboarding into the Xona Platform. Forescout’s risk scoring can change access permissions and session behavior inside Xona.
Partners also carry Xona to buyers. Xona’s release says Forescout and Radiflow work with it to replace legacy remote access, and it quotes Barrier Networks as a managed security service partner. Carahsoft, a government IT solutions provider, has a Xona team. Xona’s about page states an aim to become a core access control layer for industrial environments.
Founder and CEO Bill Moore started Xona in late 2017 with his longtime engineering partner Pete Gregel. A SCADA supervisor described an access problem to Moore when he was at Washington Gas.
A named executive bench supports Moore, including a chief financial officer, a chief revenue officer and chief product officer Raed Albuliwi. KuppingerCole invited Moore to discuss the market in its December 2025 webinar on the Leadership Compass. The reviewed sources show no earlier company Moore built or sold and no sustained publication record, so Moore’s track record in those sources is Xona itself.
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| f1 | Xona: Secure Access Platform for Critical Infrastructure (platform page) | official | 2026-10-04 |
| f2 | OT Remote Access Firm Xona Raises $7.2 Million in Series A Funding | press | 2026-10-04 |
| f3 | Gartner Peer Insights: Xona Platform reviews and ratings | other | 2026-10-04 |
| f4 | Xona Raises $18 Million for OT Remote Access Platform | press | 2026-10-04 |
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