Wardengate
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Industrial manufacturing
4,200 employees, 12 production sites

Axon Manufacturing

63%

faster vendor access reviews for OT and control systems

Brokered third-party vendor access to OT control systems, PLC networks, and SCADA historians through Wardengate with time-bound, change-ticket-scoped policies. Vendors reach only the systems their active work requires, for the duration of the change window.

The challenge

OT vendors arrived on-site with long-lived credentials to PLCs, SCADA historians, and control networks. Plant security had no practical way to scope access to a change window or produce evidence when auditors asked who touched production systems.

The approach

  • Scoped vendor policies to active ServiceNow change tickets and maintenance windows.
  • Brokered RDP and SSH to OT tiers without placing agents on control hardware.
  • Recorded every vendor session at the gateway with playback for investigations.
  • Piloted at two plants before standardizing across all 12 production sites.

Results

  • Vendor access reviews dropped from 11 days to 4 days per quarter.
  • Zero standing vendor credentials on OT control networks after cutover.
  • Incident investigations now start with a named session recording, not log archaeology.
“Vendors used to show up on Monday with a key from 2019. Now they get an hour, for the thing they came to do, and nothing else.”
Plant security lead, Axon Manufacturing

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