When a production line stops, the clock starts ticking.
In manufacturing environments I’ve worked in, every minute of downtime can translate into missed delivery commitments and revenue you’ll never see again. How long that outage lasts will be decided in the first few minutes, when identity ownership and decision authority are still being sorted out. That authority gap is easy to underestimate.
Manufacturing leaders already plan extensively for physical disruption. Fire, power loss, equipment failure, and supply shortages are well-understood risks with playbooks and containment paths. Cyber disruption, however, changes that equation.
The lines between operational technology (OT) environments and IT networks have blurred. Security events are no longer just technical failures—they become coordination problems that hinge on who is authorized to act under pressure. Most organizations have not defined that authority in advance.
While organizations continue to invest in detection, monitoring, and segmentation, they have not assigned authority to identity. Visibility without authority creates hesitation, which can stall day-to-day operations.
How identity drives downtime risk in manufacturing
In Industry 4.0, digital connectivity, automation, and data-driven systems are embedded directly into production processes. A dense web of identities continuously authenticates across IT and OT environments to keep production moving.
Identity workflows allow machines to start and stop processes, enable systems to exchange data, and give vendors access to components. These machine identities, while invisible, are actively running the business.
So, while IT and OT environments have converged, ownership has not. Identity is often treated as a background technology function, managed by IT teams, while production leaders assume access will function reliably without intervention. Under normal conditions, that expectation holds. Under pressure, it often does not.
What breaks in the first minutes of a production incident
In my experience, extended downtime rarely begins with familiar enemies like malware. It starts with uncertainty.
In one environment I worked with, a critical machine had to be isolated during an incident—but no one could confirm who owned the system account that controlled its safety interlocks. Nothing was technically broken, but minutes were lost sorting it out. What stalled recovery was the lack of identity clarity at the exact moment decisive action was needed.
Even in environments with strong asset inventories, teams often lack substantial visibility into which identities—human, machine, or vendor—are active, trusted, or safe to revoke in the moment.
They might run into a temporary password that never got removed or a machine account with no clear owner. Maybe no one can confirm whether or not they can safely disconnect a vendor’s session. Perhaps a shift worker is unable to do their job because their access doesn’t align with production scheduling.
Even minor identity issues can introduce decision latency when teams need to act. In practice, these moments expose the same gaps again and again:
- Limited visibility into which identities are active in the affected environment.
- Uncertainty about which systems can be isolated safely.
- Lack of clarity over who has the authority to disconnect access without triggering wider disruption.
When teams are forced to choose between keeping systems connected and aggressively isolating, they lack the information needed to act with confidence. This slows containment.
Identity as the control plane for IT/OT convergence
Systems that once operated independently now depend on the same networks, services, and external connections—and each of those connections introduces identity.
This doesn’t mean OT teams should become IT experts, or that IT teams should dictate production processes. It means identity needs to work across both environments in a way that supports how production actually runs.
When identity governance remains siloed, controls either slow production or get bypassed entirely. Neither outcome helps production recover faster when something goes wrong.
Even in environments aligned with established OT security standards, such as IEC 62443 and NIST SP 800-82, segmentation and control are clearly defined, but decision authority during live production incidents often is not.
Identity is a production asset
And while AI-driven threats dominate headlines, the outages that cause the most real-world pain in manufacturing often stem from more fundamental identity failures—gaps that directly affect day-to-day production.
Of course, we wouldn’t treat production equipment as optional. Every robot, controller, and automation system is cataloged, maintained, and governed because it directly impacts output. Identity security should be treated the same way.
In the end, downtime spreads when identity decisions take longer than technical ones. Manufacturers who clarify authority, maintain visibility, and align identity governance to real production workflows can act quickly when it matters. Confident identity decisions contain impact, reestablish trusted access, and bring systems back faster—without introducing new risk.
As manufacturers align identity security across IT and OT environments to strengthen operational resilience, many are rethinking how access, authority, and visibility work under pressure. For a deeper look at how one global manufacturer is advancing this shift, the CyberArk Identity Security Trailblazers webinar featuring Bosch highlights its multi-cloud identity security evolution.
Fabrice Delouche is the director of EMEA Broad Manufacturing at CyberArk, a Palo Alto Networks company.
