What’s the “right” level of access? Examining operational security governance in manufacturing
Legacy systems, shared devices, and third-party access are stretching security thin. Find out how manufacturers are tightening control without adding friction.
Manufacturers are modernizing fast, but many plants still juggle old and new systems, shared devices, and a high volume of internal and external users. The result is a tricky question with big consequences: what is the right level of access for each person, device, and workflow? Get it wrong and you invite downtime, help desk overload, and increased risk to critical systems. Get it right and you improve uptime, quality, and safety while reducing the chance of a third-party data breach. The path forward is practical operational security that is measurable and rooted in day-to-day work.
The real-world access problem to solve
Most factories run a mix of legacy and modern applications. Workstations are shared across shifts. Mobile devices circulate between teams. Temporary workers and contractors arrive in waves. These realities strain policy and process. Without clear access management, plants see password sharing, inconsistent identity authentication, and weak audit trails. That makes it difficult to prevent unauthorized access and slows investigations when something goes wrong.
Operational security governance addresses this by defining who can access which system, on what device, under what conditions, and for how long. It also clarifies how to grant, review, and revoke access when roles change. The aim is not to add hoops to jump through. It is to make access controls strong enough for auditors and security teams to trust and accurate enough to give frontline workers the precise level of access they need.
What “right level of access” really means
There is no single setting that fits every role. A plant operator who monitors a production cell needs quick access to connected machinery and a small set of apps. A maintenance engineer needs elevated rights for short, well-documented windows. A vendor who tunes a line controller may need secure remote access, but only when sponsored, recorded, and bound to specific systems. A back-office analyst can work with delayed data and does not need live controls.
A mature program aligns least privilege and role-based privilege to each profile. Start with the minimum needed to perform the job, then add time-bound, step-up authentication for sensitive actions. Combine role definitions with identity access controls that travel with the user across shared workstations and mobile devices. This keeps access predictable, shortens login time, and reduces errors.
What the data says about operational security
Research points to clear priorities and gaps in manufacturing security investment. Keep the following in mind as you plan:
- Leading manufacturers are 58% more likely than peers to use user and device authentication solutions.
- Digital literacy is a top skill gap among frontline workers, so ease of use in identity authentication is essential for adoption.
- Top objectives for IT/OT security investment include improving operational reliability (37%), increasing employee productivity (30%), mitigating risk (25%), and ensuring compliance (17%).
- 80% of manufacturers report increased demand for IAM solutions.
- 32% struggle with managing contractors and third-party access.
Taken together, these data points support a simple message: access controls must help people do the work, not slow them down. If solutions are hard to use, workers will look for shortcuts, and governance will break down.
A practical framework for operational security governance
Use the steps below to design, deploy, and sustain operational security without clogging workflows.
- Map roles to tasks and systems
Build a clean catalog of job roles, tasks, and the applications or equipment each task requires. Include shop floor software, historian views, quality systems, and device management portals. This creates the baseline for least privilege and role-based privilege. - Standardize authentication for shared environments
Shared devices and workstations are common in plants. Choose identity authentication that supports fast sign-in and sign-out, online and offline access, and consistent behavior across shifts. Avoid one-off exceptions that confuse users. Simplicity here is a major driver of adoption. - Segment external access
Vendors and contractors should never use staff accounts or be provisioned broad access rights. Provide secure remote access that isolates sessions, enforces approval workflows, and records activity. Apply time limits and restrict access to only the systems in scope. This reduces the likelihood of a third-party data breach and improves audit readiness. - Design for resilience and offline access
Manufacturing sites face network brownouts, planned downtime, and maintenance windows. Ensure identity access controls only fail in predictable ways and support offline access for essential tasks. Document fallback procedures and test them in drills. - Enforce reviews and recertification
Access that is never reviewed will expand silently. Set clear recertification cycles for privileged roles, shared device entitlements, and vendor access packages. Tie these reviews to change events such as shift changes, contractor offboarding, and equipment upgrades. - Instrument for visibility
Collect access telemetry that shows login times, failed attempts, and privileged session activity. Use this to spot friction that hurts productivity, and to catch suspicious patterns early. Analytics should inform both user experience wins and unauthorized access prevention. - Train for clarity and confidence
Digital literacy gaps are real. Replace long manuals with short, role-based guides and quick demos. Select an access management solution that makes it simple to request access, escalate identity authentication when required, and end sessions on shared devices.
What you’ll need to deploy access controls in your factory
So what does “good” look like when it comes to deploying access controls in factories?
- Frontline access: Single sign-on to a small, curated app set. Fast re-authentication on shared workstations. Clear session timeouts so devices are not left open between tasks. Fast user switching so users can have their own unique session.
- Maintenance and engineering: Step-up identity authentication for configuration changes. Short, auditable windows for elevated rights.
- Vendors and contractors: Secure remote access with approvals, session recording, and automatic expiration. No shared credentials.
- Supervisors and quality: Role profiles that include reporting tools, incident review, and limited overrides with clear justification.
- IT and security: A unified view of identity governance across IT and OT, with alerts for policy violations and drift from least privilege.
Sustaining governance without slowing work
Sustainment is where many programs falter. Build these habits into your operating rhythm:
- Quarterly access hygiene: Reconcile accounts, disable dormant access, and remove stale vendor entitlements. Ideally, you work with an access management solution that does this automatically, so this step should involve a quick check or confirmation.
- Change impact checks: When a new line comes online or a legacy system is replaced, review affected roles and identity access controls.
- Friction reviews: Hear directly from your end users where their access pain points are. Use analytics to locate slow logins, frequent timeouts, or repeated help desk tickets. Fix the experience before users invent workarounds.
- Drills and tabletop exercises: Test secure remote access for emergency vendor interventions. Test offline access during planned outages. Document lessons learned.
Where Imprivata fits
Imprivata Enterprise Access Management™ supports passwordless multi-factor authentication and single sign-on for shared workstations and legacy and modern applications, helping frontline workers move quickly while maintaining strong identity authentication.
For third parties, Imprivata Vendor Privileged Access Management™ provides secure remote access with granular authorization, session monitoring, and automatic expiration to reduce third-party data breach risk.
Imprivata Privileged Access Management™ adds enterprise credential vaulting and oversight for administrative tasks.
Together, these solutions reinforce operational security governance across users, devices, and applications while supporting online and offline access in demanding environments.
Achieve operational security without sacrificing workflow
Operational security is not a side project. It is a set of choices that shape how people access systems every hour of every shift. When identity governance, least privilege, role-based privilege, and practical identity access controls come together, plants reduce risk and keep work moving.
The payoff is fewer surprises, faster recovery when incidents occur, steadier production, and a workforce that trusts the process because it works.
Click here to learn more about how strategic access management can help your manufacturing floor optimize for both security and efficiency.