SSenStone Secures Scale-up TIPS Backing to Build an OT Security Hub

SEOUL, 28 October 2026 – SSenStone has been selected for Korea’s 2026 Scale-up TIPS programme (Specialised Track, Round 2), run by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (TIPA). The OT security company, whose solutions are built on its proprietary OTAC technology, will receive KRW 3 billion in government R&D funding to develop its OTAC Trusted Access Gateway (TAG) into a hub for core OT security functions, including session and privilege control after authentication. The project is also expected to strengthen OT security across national infrastructure and industry, and to boost the competitiveness of Korea’s OT security sector.

Scale-up TIPS (Tech Investor Program for Scale-up) pairs private investment with government R&D funding. Private investors, known as operators, identify and back promising technology companies, and the government then co-funds their R&D to help them scale. SSenStone, which leads the project, was selected on the strength of its OTAC technology and its track record in national infrastructure and private manufacturing.

The selection comes as attacks on OT environments rise sharply. The FBI has confirmed cyberattacks on water treatment facilities in 12 US states, and in the UK, an attack believed to be linked to Iranian hackers took a gas power plant offline for four days. Regulations such as the EU’s NIS2 Directive and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are also fuelling demand for endpoint access control in OT.

SSenStone argues that securing the network perimeter is only part of the answer. Anyone who reaches control equipment such as PLCs and RTUs must be identified, authenticated and, if unauthorised, stopped. That applies to internal operators and maintenance staff just as much as to external remote users, and the check needs to happen at the point of access to the equipment itself.

Built on OTAC (One-Time Authentication Code), SSenStone’s one-way dynamic authentication technology, OTAC Trusted Access Gateway (TAG) already authenticates anyone connecting to OT endpoints such as PLCs and blocks unauthorised connections, without the need to replace existing equipment. Through Scale-up TIPS, SSenStone will build on these field-proven capabilities to extend control beyond the moment of connection to session management and privilege control. New capabilities will be commercialised in phases until the project concludes in August 2029.

SSenStone’s technology is already in use in the field. The company validated its user authentication and access control framework for OT through a performance-sharing project with Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-water), and its technology runs in the 24/7 production lines of a global battery manufacturer, where it has delivered stable control performance. It also helps organisations meet the identification and access control requirements of international standards such as IEC 62443 and regulations including NIS2 and the CRA.

“Being able to connect to a network doesn’t give you the right to access the equipment on it,” said Chang Hun Yoo, CEO of SSenStone. “We’ve proven our technology for authenticating who accesses equipment and blocking unauthorised connections in both national infrastructure and private manufacturing. This project lets us extend that foundation to session and privilege control after connection, and go further to advance a comprehensive OT security framework that links everything from asset identification to the integrity of control.”

* This press release was produced with support from the Scale-up TIPS and Global TIPS R&D programmes organised by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs).