In manufacturing, a cyberattack does not stop at data loss. It can stop production lines, delay shipments, disrupt suppliers, and force teams into manual recovery.
Toyota saw this when its supplier, Kojima Industries, suffered a cyberattack in 2022, forcing Toyota to halt operations at all 14 Japanese plants for a day. [Source: Toyota Times]
Norsk Hydro’s cyberattack impacted operations across several business areas, while JBS had to shut down beef plants across the United States after a ransomware attack. [Source: Hydro, Axios]
These incidents reveal a hard truth for manufacturers. When critical access is compromised, business operations can come to a halt.
Manufacturing environments run on a connected mix of IT, OT, ICS, SCADA, engineering workstations, endpoints, cloud platforms, third-party vendors, automation tools, and legacy systems. Every admin account, vendor login, shared password, service account, and local admin privilege can become a path into production-critical systems.
That is why privileged access security matters.
Why manufacturing needs a PAM solution
Manufacturing environments are hard to secure because they bring together modern IT and legacy OT systems, many of which were built for availability rather than cybersecurity.
Administrators, engineers, vendors, OEMs, and automation tools need daily access to critical systems. Without proper controls, this often leads to:
- Shared credentials across OT systems and engineering workstations.
- Permanent vendor access to plant systems.
- Local admin rights on operator and engineering endpoints.
- Hardcoded secrets in scripts and automation workflows.
- Limited visibility into privileged sessions.
- Incomplete audit trails for compliance reviews.
A PAM solution replaces these weak practices with controlled, temporary, monitored, and auditable access. It ensures users, vendors, administrators, and machines get the right access only when needed, without exposing credentials or slowing production.
Top manufacturing use cases for a PAM solution
1. Secure access to ICS, SCADA, and OT systems
Manufacturing plants depend on ICS, SCADA, PLCs, HMIs, and engineering workstations to keep production moving. Engineers and OT teams need privileged access to these systems for troubleshooting, configuration changes, updates, and emergency fixes.
But when credentials are shared, reused, or unmanaged, attackers can use one compromised account to reach production-critical systems. In OT environments, even a small, unauthorized change can affect uptime, safety, and operational continuity.
A PAM solution vaults privileged accounts, enables password-less remote sessions, grants just-in-time access, and records privileged activity. This helps manufacturers secure OT access without exposing credentials or disrupting plant operations.
2. Control remote vendor and OEM access
OEMs, machine vendors, contractors, and system integrators often need remote access to troubleshoot equipment, apply updates, or support plant operations. This access is usually required at short notice, especially when production teams are dealing with machine downtime or performance issues.
But if vendor access remains active after the work is done, or if it relies on shared credentials, it creates third-party risk. A single unmanaged vendor account can become a weak entry point into production systems.
A PAM solution provides time-bound vendor access during approved maintenance windows. Vendors get access only after approval, credentials stay hidden, and sessions are recorded for audit and review.
3. Prevent production disruption from supplier and third-party risk
Attackers often target suppliers, contractors, and equipment vendors that may have weaker security controls. Once compromised, these trusted third parties can become an entry point into the manufacturer’s IT and OT environment.
Direct connections, shared credentials, poor password hygiene, excessive privileges, and persistent remote access can expose production-connected systems to credential theft, malware, unauthorized activity, and lateral movement.
A PAM solution places supplier access behind a controlled layer, vaults and rotates credentials, restricts access by role, system, and duration, requires approvals, and monitors sessions. This helps contain suspicious activity before it spreads into critical production environments.
4. Remove local admin rights from endpoints
Engineering workstations, operator terminals, and plant-floor endpoints often carry local admin rights so teams can install tools, run scripts, or fix issues quickly. While this helps avoid delays, it also gives users and malware more control than they should have.
Permanent admin rights can expose these systems to ransomware, unauthorized software installation, malware execution, configuration changes, and insider misuse. This is especially risky on endpoints connected to production workflows.
A PAM solution with endpoint privilege management removes standing local admin rights and allows approved applications, scripts, or tasks to run with elevated privileges based on policy.
5. Reduce ransomware spread through least privilege
Ransomware can bring physical production to a standstill. It often enters through a phishing email or malicious download on a Windows endpoint and then spreads to engineering workstations, operator terminals, and production-connected systems.
Standing local administrator rights and the ability to run unapproved applications give ransomware the privileges it needs to disable security controls, encrypt files, and move from IT systems into production environments.
A PAM solution with endpoint privilege management removes unnecessary local admin rights, blocks unauthorized applications, elevates only approved tools, and grants temporary access through policy and approval workflows. This helps contain malware at the endpoint and reduce lateral movement into production systems.
6. Control IT and OT administrator access
IT and OT administrators need privileged access for patching, upgrades, troubleshooting, maintenance, and incident response. Their work is critical, but the access they use is also highly sensitive because it can affect production systems directly.
Broad, always-on access increases the risk of unauthorized changes, accidental disruption, misuse, and privilege abuse. Access should be temporary, approved, and aligned with the task.
A PAM solution provides role-based access, approval workflows, and just-in-time privileges that expire after use, giving admins the access they need without leaving privileges open.
7. Manage default, shared, and service account passwords
Many industrial systems, legacy applications, devices, and service accounts still depend on default, shared, or rarely changed passwords. These credentials are often known across teams, stored insecurely, or left unchanged for long periods.
This makes it difficult to track accountability and increases the risk of credential misuse. If one password is exposed, attackers may be able to access multiple systems or move deeper into the environment.
A PAM solution stores privileged credentials in an encrypted vault, rotates passwords automatically, restricts access through policies, and enables password-less sessions.
8. Secure DevOps, automation, and machine-to-machine access
Manufacturing teams use automation tools, scripts, CI/CD pipelines, robotic workflows, APIs, and machine-to-machine connections to keep operations efficient. These workflows often depend on API keys, tokens, certificates, and service account credentials.
When secrets are hardcoded, shared, or left unmanaged, they become difficult to rotate and easy to misuse. This creates silent risk because non-human access often goes unnoticed until there is an incident.
A PAM solution secures these secrets, removes hardcoded credentials, rotates them automatically, and controls access for non-human identities.
9. Monitor privileged sessions for audits and investigations
When a privileged account is misused, security teams need to know who accessed the system, what actions were performed, and when. This becomes even more important when the activity involves vendors, admins, OT systems, or production-critical assets.
Without session visibility, investigations depend on scattered logs and incomplete evidence. This can slow down incident response and make audit reviews harder.
A PAM solution provides session monitoring, recording, playback, audit logs, alerts, and reports to support investigations, audits, and accountability.
10. Support compliance and audit readiness
Manufacturers need to prove that privileged access is controlled, monitored, and reviewed for requirements such as NIST, IEC 62443, CMMC, and internal audits. Shared accounts, manual access tracking, and incomplete logs make this difficult.
Audit readiness should not start only when an audit is near. Manufacturers need continuous records of access requests, approvals, sessions, password usage, and privileged activity.
A PAM solution helps enforce access policies, maintain centralized audit trails, run access reviews, and generate audit-ready reports.
Introducing Securden Unified PAM for Manufacturing
Securden Unified PAM helps manufacturers secure privileged access across IT, OT, endpoints, vendors, automation workflows, service accounts, and legacy systems without slowing production.
Key capabilities mapped to manufacturing use cases
- ICS, SCADA, and OT access security
Control privileged access to production-critical OT systems. - Secure vendor and OEM access
Grant time-bound, approved access without exposing credentials. - Third-party access governance
Limit supplier and contractor access by system, role, and duration. - Endpoint Privilege Management
Remove local admin rights and allow controlled privilege elevation. - Least privilege for ransomware containment
Remove standing admin rights, block unauthorized applications, and allow elevation only when required. - Controlled IT and OT administrator access
Provide role-based, approved, just-in-time access for maintenance and troubleshooting. - Password and service account management
Vault, rotate, and protect shared, default, and service account credentials. - DevOps and automation secrets security
Secure API keys, tokens, certificates, and automation secrets. - Session monitoring and investigation
Monitor and record privileged sessions for audits and incident investigation. - Compliance-ready reporting
Maintain centralized audit trails, access records, and reports for compliance reviews.
Want to see how these PAM use cases apply to real manufacturing environments?
Download the full guide to explore how Securden Unified PAM helps manufacturing IT, OT, security, vendor management, DevOps, and compliance teams secure privileged access without disrupting production.
Download the Manufacturing PAM Use Cases Guide
Ready to secure priviliged access?
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