CyberArk’s Laurence Elbana discusses how identity security enables Saudi manufacturers to innovate safely under Vision 2030

The transformation sweeping through Saudi Arabia's manufacturing sector is nothing short of remarkable. As part of Vision 2030's National Industrial Strategy, factories across the Kingdom are evolving into smart, connected environments where AI, robotics, and cloud solutions work together to maximize efficiency. However, according to CyberArk’s Identity Threat Landscape report, 85% of manufacturing firms suffered at least two identity security incidents last year.

For Saudi manufacturers building the Kingdom's industrial future, the question isn't whether to embrace Industry 4.0 technologies, it's how to do so without creating vulnerabilities that could compromise operations and intellectual property.

The Scale Nobody Anticipated

Modern manufacturing security presents a challenge that catches many security teams off guard. For every human identity, there are roughly 82 machine identities requiring management. Every industrial sensor, robotic arm, quality control camera, and predictive maintenance algorithm within a smart factory needs credentials and authentication. Whether you're running a  factory in Riyadh, Jubail, or Yanbu, you're no longer managing hundreds of identities but hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions.

The complexity multiplies when you consider what's happening on factory floors right now. Most manufacturers are operating legacy OT systems that have controlled critical production processes for decades and are now somehow integrated with new cloud platforms and AI applications—something their founders never imagined. These older systems were built when industrial networks were isolated islands and physically separated from the outside world, which means they often can't support basic security measures like password rotation because nobody anticipated they'd ever need to. Yet, these same systems now communicate with cloud analytics platforms and exchange sensitive data with supply chain partners across the Kingdom and globally.

Why Identity Became the Primary Vulnerability

Understanding how breaches unfold clarifies why identity security demands urgent attention from senior leadership. When targeting humans, attackers rarely use brute force anymore and instead use carefully crafted phishing emails or social engineering tactics to trick someone into handing over legitimate credentials. Once inside with valid credentials, they look exactly like authorized users. From there, they move laterally through networks with patience and precision, searching for more privileged accounts while avoiding detection.

Their favorite targets are developers and engineers, the people who need broad access to cloud resources and production systems to innovate quickly and solve problems as they arise. For Saudi manufacturers competing globally and meeting ambitious Vision 2030 timelines, these team members can't afford security bottlenecks that slow them down every time they need to troubleshoot an issue or deploy an update. However, their access also makes them attractive targets for threat actors who understand that compromising one engineering account can open doors to wider production environments.

This creates genuine tension for security teams between moving fast to stay competitive versus locking down access to protect operations and intellectual property.

The Zero Standing Privileges Solution

The challenge requires rethinking how we approach access management across the entire organization. Traditional security models grant permanent privileged access, meaning standing privileges that exist whether they're being used or not, and this creates constant risk. Innovative Saudi manufacturers are instead adopting zero standing privileges, where users receive only the minimum permissions necessary, only when needed, and only for the time the task requires.

Consider a practical example. A maintenance engineer needs to recalibrate a production line at a facility to address a quality issue. Traditionally, they might hold permanent administrative access to that system, despite only needing access a few times each month. With zero standing privileges, they request temporary access for a specific task and the system evaluates their request and grants one hour of administrative rights. When that hour expires, those privileges automatically vanish. This just-in-time approach eliminates the problem of permanently privileged accounts sitting idle, and in doing so, shrinks your attack surface.

Protecting machine identities

Machine identities present an even more difficult challenge. Many IoT devices deployed in manufacturing environments don't support password changes because they lack the necessary interfaces for credential rotation, but leaving these credentials static for months or years creates persistent vulnerabilities scattered across factory floors. Modern identity security platforms address this through automated key and certificate management systems that work continuously in the background, rotating credentials and managing certificates without constant human intervention. For Saudi manufacturers deploying substantial numbers of sensors and connected devices, this automation is the only practical approach that works at an industrial scale.

The Real Cost of Getting This Wrong

Production disruptions are expensive, but security breaches involving the theft of intellectual property can be catastrophic, with damages ranging between $29 million and $42 million per incident, although with some trade secrets worth over $1 billion, the cost of a breach could go much higher. For Saudi manufacturers developing proprietary processes, for example in petrochemicals and advanced materials, this is a major threat with the potential to destroy a business.

Security must be embedded from the start, which requires eliminating standing privileges, automating credential management for thousands of machine identities, and implementing continuous monitoring to catch anomalies before they become breaches.

For Saudi manufacturers building the industrial future envisioned in Vision 2030, investing in robust identity security is essential, and determines whether you'll lead your sector or spend years recovering from preventable breaches.