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16/08/2026 5:00 pm
TL;DR: Manufacturing cyberattacks can halt production, delay shipments, and force manual recovery, according to Securden’s guide on privileged access management in plant environments. The operational lesson is that standing access, shared credentials, and unmanaged vendor or machine identities turn cyber risk into uptime risk, so PAM becomes a production control, not just an audit control.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Securden: manufacturing PAM use cases and privileged access controls
By the numbers:
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
- 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage.
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when teams rely on shared accounts for privileged access?
A: Shared accounts break accountability first.
Q: Why do privileged access controls matter more in manufacturing than in standard IT?
A: Manufacturing environments tie identity directly to uptime, safety, and supply continuity.
Q: How can security teams govern machine credentials in plant automation?
A: They should treat service accounts, tokens, certificates, and API keys as governed identities with ownership, expiry, rotation, and revocation rules.
Practitioner guidance
- Separate OT and IT privilege governance Classify ICS, SCADA, engineering workstation, and corporate admin access into different approval and monitoring paths so production systems are not governed like standard office endpoints.
- Time-box all vendor and OEM access Require approved windows, hidden credentials, and automatic expiry for every contractor or supplier session, including emergency support paths.
- Remove standing local admin rights from plant endpoints Use policy-based elevation for engineering workstations and operator terminals so users can run approved tasks without carrying permanent administrative privilege.
What's in the full article
Securden's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Use-case mapping for ICS, SCADA, endpoint, vendor, and automation access in manufacturing plants.
- Practical examples of how privilege controls apply to vendor maintenance, workstation elevation, and service account management.
- A deployment-oriented view of PAM functions such as session recording, approval workflows, and audit reporting.
- How the manufacturing-specific use cases connect to compliance and production continuity requirements.
👉 Read Securden's guide on manufacturing PAM use cases and privileged access controls →
Manufacturing PAM: are your IT, OT and vendor controls keeping up?
Explore further
16/08/2026 5:01 pm
Manufacturing PAM is really about production continuity governance, not just privileged account control. The article is right to frame plant access as an operational risk because manufacturing environments fail differently from office IT. When access reaches OT, engineering workstations, or vendor maintenance channels, the business impact is measured in downtime, safety exposure, and supply disruption. Practitioners should therefore evaluate PAM by whether it reduces production blast radius, not only by whether it satisfies audit language.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- 71% of NHIs are not rotated within recommended time frames, increasing the risk of compromise over time.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable for vendor access failures in manufacturing?
A: Accountability should sit with the organisation that granted the access and owns the systems being accessed, even when a vendor is the user. If third-party access is not inventoried, approved, and reviewed, the failure is a governance failure, not just a vendor issue. Manufacturing teams should map accountability to each access path and review it as part of privileged access governance.
👉 Read our full editorial: Manufacturing PAM use cases: securing IT, OT, vendors and secrets
