Privileged access overhaul for a manufacturer

The client is a German manufacturer whose admin rights had accumulated for years across both IT and shop-floor OT systems. On the OT side, a compromised privileged account can halt production, not just leak data.

Standing privilege had spread far beyond who actually needed it, and any fix had to avoid breaking the access engineers genuinely relied on to keep lines running.

Admin rights had accumulated for years across both IT and shop-floor OT systems, far beyond who actually needed them. Privilege sprawl had become the norm.

Every standing privileged account was a target, and on the OT side a compromise could halt production, not just leak data. The consequences reached into physical operations.

The manufacturer had to shrink that exposure without breaking the access engineers genuinely relied on to keep lines running. Security could not come at the cost of production.

We moved privileged access to just-in-time, approval-gated elevation, so rights exist only when needed and expire automatically. Removing standing privilege is the single biggest reduction in attack surface here.

The model spanned IT and OT together, with session recording on every elevated session for accountability. Covering OT as well as IT is what closed the most dangerous gap.

We mapped real access needs first, so the cutover removed standing rights without stranding the people who needed them, and rollout was staged by system criticality, proving the workflow on lower-risk estate before touching production OT. Exposure fell sharply without disrupting the line.