Contents
- Introduction
- What is IAM?
- Regulatory compliance challenges to OSHA, EPA, and FDA
- Industry related use-cases
- Sath’s solution
- IDHub for manufacturing compliance
- IDHub benefits to manufacturers
- Sath’s plan
Secure Access Control for Manufacturers
Manufacturers are learning that using spreadsheets to manage employee identification—and which enterprise or operational applications employees have access to—is becoming unwieldy and burdensome. With many employees and 3rd party users to monitor, it can be problematic for information technology (IT) and operations managers to know who has access to enterprise business and operational technology (OT) applications, spreadsheets, software, or transactions.
In addition to company employees, there may be independent contractors, system integrators, or temporary workers that need access to the premises and to both business and operational software applications.
Manufacturers need a single source of truth to manage digital entities and the physical and virtual locations and applications they use.
Businesses can confidently move their manufacturing endeavors forward through intelligent identity security using identity and access management (IAM) to control access to human, nonhuman, and third-party assets.
What is Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a framework of policies and technologies to ensure the right users (who are part of the ecosystem connected to an enterprise) have appropriate access to technology resources. IAM systems not only identify, authenticate, and control access for individuals who use IT resources, but also the hardware and applications employees need access to. IAM addresses the need to ensure appropriate access to resources across increasingly heterogeneous technology environments, and to meet increasingly rigorous compliance requirements.
Manufacturing Regulatory Compliance Challenges
IAM can help manufacturers adhere to regulatory requirements, which can differ based on industrial sectors like food and beverage, chemical and petroleum, or heavy industry. Entities like Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expect compliance with their regulations. Some companies may have to comply with additional regulations that cover the data privacy concerns of a manufacturer’s supply chain, and are particularly important if some business transactions or data is sensitive in nature.
Manufacturers must control user privileges and accounts across the board in their target systems and applications. These target system instances can be enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, manufacturing execution systems (MES), and laboratory information management systems (LIMS). This control involves creating and revoking target system accounts, user access audits, and certifications.
OSHA and EPA
OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) and other laws—for example, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the EPA’s Clean Air Act (CAA)—are some of the laws that nearly all manufacturers must follow. These require businesses to keep precise records of hazardous material inventory, guarantee that staff members have received training on how to handle and use dangerous compounds, and give staff members access to Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs).
FDA
To ensure the safety and effectiveness of food, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, the FDA oversees their production, processing, and packaging. Food and beverage manufacturers, for example, must keep accurate records of their production processes, equipment calibrations, and quality control methods. According to FDA regulations, businesses must regulate access to these processes and data while ensuring that only authorized staff can read and alter them, which is much easier through IAM.
Manufacturing IAM Use Cases
The following examples represent a few typical use cases you could see in several manufacturing industries, illustrating how IAM can be beneficial in managing or eliminating these challenges.
Unauthorized bill of material entries
Consider an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that produces complex automated heat treating furnace systems primarily for the automotive, agriculture, and aerospace industries. This OEM had many challenges with maintaining the ever-changing bills of materials (BOMs) for its many product variations. After troubleshooting the engineering and operations workflows, the engineering manager discovered that many people were making changes to BOMs without having the authorization to do so, resulting in errors on BOMs. With the implementation of IAM, only certified employees would have the ability to access BOM management software, like OpenBOM, Oracle PLM Cloud, or Katana MRP, ensuring BOM data is accurate and managed correctly.
Disgruntled employees and other bad actors
Bad actors, like hackers or disgruntled, terminated employees, can wreak havoc in any business. This is especially true in industries that affect public safety like food and beverage manufacturers, oil and gas refineries, and utility power generation. Identity verification and access to sensitive areas are paramount here. IAM can help ensure that when employees are terminated, their access to all company resources is immediately revoked, and the appropriate people are notified of the termination. IAM (Identity and Access Management) approval workflows are processes that govern the granting, modification, or removal of access rights, and can be automated by using connectors allowing for immediate deprovisioning to company resources, preventing security breaches and misconduct.
Dealing with regulations, paper trails, and regulatory compliance
It is tragic when people are injured. OSHA requires strict reporting and always demands a paper trail. With IAM reporting, admins can quickly get the reports needed for OSHA, providing a comprehensive record of user activities, access changes, and permission assignments, to demonstrate compliance during a tragedy, like someone injured on the job. IAM access reviews are scheduled, timely audits, used to proactively audit and ensure user access rights are correct before an incident happens. They are assigned to specific users to perform the audit, ensuring compliance is being met.
Preventing erroneous EAM and CMMS entries
CMMS software programs such as IBM Maximo Limble CMMS enable manufacturers to proactively maintain their equipment by scheduling preventive maintenance, and in some cases, anticipate equipment failure and act before tragedy becomes reality. Only authorized maintenance engineering personnel should have access to entering data into the CMMS or creating reports. When a production operator at one asset-intensive aerospace contract manufacturer made erroneous CMMS entries as a favor to his technician friend, it led to an inaccurate report that resulted in the contract manufacturer receiving a hefty fine. IAM Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a security model where access permissions are assigned based on roles rather than individual user identities. So in this example, the “Production Manager” is the only person, or “Role”, who can add CMMS entries, not his friend. The production manager role would automatically assign the CMMS system credentials to the employee with the job title “Production Manager”. Any employee attribute can be used to define a role, like the maintenance department, or location Plant 3, or job title technician, and any job specific resources can be part of a role.
Preventing unauthorized personnel from making software changes
A contract electronics manufacturer making circuit boards for a well-known PC company uses automatic test equipment (ATE) to test the circuit boards. Senior-level engineering technicians are the only personnel that should be allowed to access the test programs. A senior tech discovered how to “modify” test programs so that marginal circuit boards would pass the ATE test. This resulted in an artificial higher shift yield. However, when defective circuit boards were deployed into the PCs and those defective computers were sold, a massive recall ensued. IAM could have prevented that technician from fudging the parameters. Role-based access control would be ideal in this case as well.
Let Sath experts lead the way!
Sath Inc. understands the challenges businesses encounter in securing access. With more than two decades of experience implementing and overseeing identity management platforms for numerous companies, including Fortune 500 firms, in 2021 they launched IDHub, an advanced Identity and Access Management software solution designed specifically for ease of use, low-code maintenance, and out-of-the-box security and regulatory compliance. The software enables administrators to see and manage all user accounts from a central place, so they can make informed decisions about how company information, data, resources, and assets are accessed and managed.
Businesses—especially manufacturers—are dealing with expanding IT responsibilities, consisting of on-prem solutions and an increasing number of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. Hybrid IT environments provide businesses with productivity and cost savings but create challenges for IT teams to ensure speed of service and information security of company data.
Most IT teams strive to manage the right access, for the right people, to the right systems. However, when discovering, managing, and securing access to all company resources is manual, it requires a specialized skill set and involves considerable cost, leading to poor cybersecurity and increased risk of data breaches.
Sath’s goal is to enhance organizational cybersecurity for businesses of all sizes, with simple identity management. With the implementation of IDHub, you can assert confidence with stakeholders that you have protected the organization.
IDHub for Manufacturing Compliance
IAM allows administrators to easily manage user access rights, permissions, roles, and all access related information from a central, easy to use location. Sath implementation experts work with client teams to get IDHub setup exactly as imagined. The software allows administrators to:
- See all company accounts in one place
- Manage the applications each user has access to
- Detect and audit who has access to specific applications
- Automate onboarding and termination access provisioning and deprovisioning
- Track when users receive access, what their rights are, and how they were approved
- Quickly onboard new users, modify existing users, and remove users entirely
IDHub Features
Role-Based Access Control
Ensure employees can access only the areas relevant to their job. Automate the provisioning and deprovisioning according to the user account attributes. Continually process access changes through the entire journey of the employee.
Workflow Engine
IDHub’s workflow engine comes with many out-of-the-box, common manufacturing approval workflows, and it can accommodate any custom approval process needed, with minimal technical experience, as it uses a drag-and-drop low-code interface.
Access Requests
IDHub allows users to request access to business resources, like applications and permissions, roles, and service requests, which are any custom request needed for the business, like access to specific buildings or areas of the plant. In some cases, admins don’t want users to be able to request access to specific resources. IDHub solves this by allowing admins to make any resource non-requestable, and only granted via roles and auto assignment. Every resource is configured to follow its own approval workflow, and can be tagged with any word needed to quickly identify it, like “Production dept”, “IT dept”, or “High-Risk”.
IDHub Connectors
IDHub connectors provide a path to external systems, configured as independent applications that connect IDHub and target systems. Connectors help eliminate manual work, and save lots of IT time by automating the provisioning and deprovisioning of access, as the user attributes change throughout the lifecycle of the employee. Common connectors are Amazon Web Services (AWS) Apache Directory, Google Workspace, Microsoft Active Directory (AD), Microsoft Azure AD, MySQL, Salesforce, and flat files such as comma separated variable (CSV) files (spreadsheets). IDHub connectors use SCIM protocol to connect to external systems. If your desired application exposes REST APIs, connecting to it is effortless.
IDHub’s Benefits to Manufacturers
In their continual journey toward digital transformation, manufacturers should know how identity and access management can help them reap benefits.
IDHub allows business admins to:
- Gain visibility into all identities and machines. Reduce risk with a 360º view of all employees; robotic process automation (RPA) bots; and third-party vendors, partners, and contractors.
- Prevent IT burden and increase efficiency. Reduce IT strain by automatically granting, modifying, or revoking access as users join, change roles, or leave the organization.
- Protect intellectual property (IP). Prevent attackers from compromising sensitive IP. Spot risky users and assess outliers.
- Streamline compliance and remain audit ready. Maintain a full audit trail of accounts, permissions, policies, and actions, and prove compliance quickly with automated reporting and access reviews.
Sath’s plan
Sath believes that every business should have the necessity and responsibility to know who has access to which company resources, and do so economically. IAM is designed to streamline access requests and approvals, meet compliance, audit user access, and know and manage who has access to what.
Sath solves this by using their proven methods and tools, and following these steps:
- Discover: Work with Sath experts to assess your current access management and compliance challenges and requirements.
- Proof of Concept: See IDHub tailored to address your business's unique needs and security concerns.
- Implementation and Support: Sath implementation experts will provide a smooth implementation of IDHub, providing comprehensive support as needed.
Are you prepared to enhance security within your manufacturing company?
Every day without robust security measures increases the risk of potential breaches, vulnerabilities, and compliance misshapes.
By seamlessly integrating IDHub into your security framework, you can reassure stakeholders and demonstrate your organization's readiness to combat threats and meet regulation.
Start your journey towards enhanced security today to secure a resilient future for your manufacturing company.
It starts with a call. Schedule yours today.