Mining

The IT Challenge Facing Mining Operations

South Africa's mining sector contributes approximately 8% of GDP and employs over 475,000 people. Operations span corporate offices, processing plants, and remote mine sites — often connected by satellite or microwave links with as little as 2-10 Mbps and latency exceeding 600 ms. Underground temperatures can exceed 50 degrees Celsius in deep-level gold mines. Dust, vibration, humidity, and power instability are constant.

Cyberattacks targeting mining operations are escalating. Ransomware campaigns halt production across corporate systems. More sophisticated threat actors probe SCADA and industrial control systems that manage ventilation, hoisting, conveyors, and processing plants. A successful attack on these systems threatens not only production but worker safety.

Regulatory obligations compound the pressure. The Mine Health and Safety Act, POPIA, King IV governance principles, and MPRDA reporting requirements all place demands on IT infrastructure. Mining companies need security controls that satisfy auditors while functioning reliably at the most remote shaft.

How OAS Secures Mining Operations

OAS combines enterprise IT security expertise with a practical understanding of distributed, harsh-environment operations. Our Three Pillar methodology — Protect, Detect, Recover — addresses the full lifecycle of a security incident across every site in your operation.

Secure Remote Access Over Constrained Links

Citrix virtual desktops and applications deliver corporate systems to any authorised device at any site. Engineers and geologists at remote locations access ERP (SAP), mine planning (Deswik, Datamine, Surpac), geological modelling, fleet management, and safety systems — with sensitive data remaining centralised. Only screen pixels travel to the endpoint.

As Southern Africa's longest-standing Citrix Platinum Partner, OAS brings over 40 years of virtualisation expertise to mining environments. HDX adaptive transport and EDT protocol optimisation deliver responsive performance over VSAT satellite and microwave links where other solutions fail. Your workforce accesses the same applications at a Northern Cape shaft as they do at Johannesburg head office.

Endpoint Protection That Works Offline

SentinelOne autonomous endpoint detection and response (EDR) protects every device across your operation — head office workstations, plant control room terminals, and site laptops. Behavioural AI detection does not rely on cloud connectivity or signature updates. Protection continues in full at remote sites with intermittent or no internet access.

Ransomware rollback restores affected files automatically. When a production-halting attack strikes, recovery happens at the endpoint without waiting for a backup restoration cycle.

IT/OT Network Segmentation

In mining, IT security failures can cause physical harm. A ransomware infection in corporate email must never reach the systems controlling ventilation fans, winders, crushers, or conveyors. NetScaler and Nutanix Flow microsegmentation enforce strict separation between corporate IT networks and operational technology (SCADA, PLC, DCS) systems — aligned to the IEC 62443 standard and Purdue Model framework.

OAS operates at Levels 3.5 to 5 of the Purdue Model, providing the segmentation and security controls that prevent IT threats from reaching OT levels where physical processes are controlled.

Centralised Multi-Site Monitoring

N-able Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) provides 24/7 visibility across your entire IT estate — head office, processing plants, and the most remote sites — from a single console. Automated alerting identifies issues before they affect operations. Patch management addresses vulnerabilities across distributed infrastructure where manual updates are impractical.

Multi-tenant architecture allows OAS to manage multiple sites and subsidiaries while maintaining strict separation between each operation.

Resilient Backup Without On-Site Appliances

Cove Data Protection delivers encrypted, immutable cloud backups from any location with connectivity. Direct-to-cloud architecture eliminates the need for on-site backup appliances at remote mine sites — reducing hardware, maintenance, and the risk of local backup failure. All backup data remains within South African borders, maintaining data sovereignty.

Recovery is tested and documented. When an incident occurs, your recovery time is measured in hours, not days.

SIEM and Compliance Reporting

Splunk centralised log aggregation correlates security events across IT and OT environments. Compliance dashboards support Mine Health and Safety Act requirements, POPIA obligations, King IV governance reporting, and MPRDA data retention standards. Incident forensics provide the evidence needed when a security event triggers regulatory scrutiny.

Compliance Across Multiple Frameworks

Mining organisations in South Africa operate under overlapping regulatory obligations:

OAS maps your security controls directly to these frameworks, giving your governance and compliance teams auditable evidence when regulators or auditors require it.

Why Mining Companies Choose OAS

Your Operations Depend on Secure Infrastructure

A single ransomware incident can halt production across your entire operation — or worse, compromise the safety systems your workforce relies on. OAS's free security assessment evaluates your current defences from head office to the most remote shaft and provides a practical roadmap to resilient, enterprise-grade protection.