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25/06/2026 10:42 pm
TL;DR: Manufacturing 4.0 is expanding attack surfaces through AI, IoT, contractor access, and supplier integrations, while credential-based attacks and third-party remote access remain major entry points, according to Imprivata. IAM now has to manage production resilience, supply chain trust, and compliance at the same time, or operational efficiency will widen exposure instead of reducing it.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Imprivata: AI Advancements in Manufacturing 4.0 Increase Pressure to Safeguard Critical Infrastructure through Identity and Access Management
By the numbers:
- 48% of organizations report third-party remote access as a leading attack vector.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should manufacturers control third-party access without slowing operations?
A: Use temporary, task-scoped access with explicit expiry, strong approval workflows, and detailed logging.
Q: Why do AI and IIoT deployments increase identity risk in manufacturing?
A: They add more connected systems, more integration points, and more identities that can be abused if access is not governed tightly.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about contractor access in critical infrastructure?
A: They often treat contractor access as temporary in theory but persistent in practice.
Practitioner guidance
- Tighten third-party access lifecycles Replace open-ended vendor access with granular, temporary permissions that expire when the task ends.
- Enforce MFA across all contractor paths Apply multifactor authentication to employee, contractor, and supplier access without exceptions for operational convenience.
- Segment production access by task and system Design roles so plant-floor users, remote engineers, and vendors can reach only the systems required for their current task.
What's in the full article
Imprivata's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Imprivata's discussion of how manufacturing leaders are balancing productivity and security across AI, IoT, and shared-device environments.
- The article's specific framing of third-party access as an attack vector in critical infrastructure, including vendor oversight considerations.
- The regulatory context for manufacturing, including CMMC and the role of NIST and ISO standards in identity governance.
- Imprivata's own examples of how IAM supports both security controls and operational efficiency in manufacturing settings.
👉 Read Imprivata's analysis of AI, IAM, and manufacturing critical infrastructure risk →
Manufacturing 4.0 and IAM: what security teams need to change?
Explore further
25/06/2026 11:22 pm
Manufacturing 4.0 turns identity into a production control, not just an IT control. Once AI, IoT, contractor access, and supplier integrations share the same operational environment, the question is no longer who can log in. It is who can change the state of a system that keeps a plant running, and whether that access is still correct when the environment changes. Practitioners should treat identity governance as part of operational resilience, not a back-office compliance layer.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, according to The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- Enterprises that have experienced a compromised NHI averaged 2.7 separate incidents in the past 12 months, according to GitGuardian and CyberArk.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do you know if IAM is actually reducing operational risk?
A: You should see fewer standing privileges, narrower vendor access scopes, stronger MFA coverage, and audit trails that let you reconstruct privileged activity quickly. If access still spreads across shared devices, unsupported exceptions, or long-lived contractor accounts, IAM is helping users more than it is helping resilience.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity and access management is becoming critical in Manufacturing 4.0
