In 2024, manufacturers lost an estimated $2.8 billion to unplanned outages triggered by cyber incidents. You don’t want to be one of those manufacturers.
In the first two blogs of this series, we explored the critical transformation facing manufacturing when it comes to the convergence of IT/OT/Iot technologies and what options are available to manufacturers to keep their productions safely running.
This blog will demonstrate how Hadrian’s agentic AI offensive security platform directly addresses these complex challenges, enabling manufacturers to build truly resilient systems, ensure uninterrupted operations, and protect their valuable intellectual property.
Recapping manufacturing’s hidden exposures
The very nature of modern manufacturing—with its sprawling, often decentralized operations, rapid deployment of new technologies, and complex supply chains—creates a dynamic external attack surface ripe with unseen exposures. These include shadow IT and forgotten assets that bypass traditional security visibility.
Hadrian’s continuous asset discovery capability is engineered to cut through this complexity, providing the foundational visibility you need. Our platform continuously discovers all internet-facing assets across your digital footprint. This includes IIoT devices (Levels 0-2 of the Purdue Model), cloud-based Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) portals (Levels 4-5), and remote access points for supply chain partners (Levels 3.5/4). Hadrian discovers their public interfaces, while internal traffic remains untouched. By providing what analysts at Frost & Sullivan gauge to be 10x visibility into critical exposures, Hadrian ensures no asset (known or unknown) is left unmonitored.
Precision validation for critical assets
Knowing where your exposures lie is only half the battle; understanding which ones are genuinely exploitable is key. Traditional scanners often generate thousands of alerts, many of which are false positives or theoretical exposures that consume valuable team time and lead to alert fatigue. For manufacturers, every minute spent on noise is a minute diverted from ensuring production uptime.
Hadrian addresses this with Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV). Our AI-driven engine continuously tests (with read-only permissions) and confirms if an exposure is truly exploitable in your live production environment, which is paramount for manufacturing operations. Hadrian’s active modules emulate real attacker techniques, but are strictly non-mutative and avoid disruptive payloads by default, ensuring no unexpected writes to PLC memory or forced state-changes occur. In a recent deployment, Hadrian cut a 4000-alert backlog of potential to 12 validated issues in under 48 hours.
From external exposure to operational resilience: Hadrian’s holistic approach
Hadrian’s platform provides a comprehensive, proactive strategy to counter specific exposures threatening manufacturing operations, directly enhancing operational resilience and business continuity.
- Automated penetration testing and AEV for true exploitability: Instead of costly, point-in-time penetration tests, Hadrian provides continuous, automated testing. Our agentic AI validates exposures with clear proof-of-exploit steps. This enables manufacturers to remediate threats up to 80% faster, significantly reducing mean time to remediation (MTTR) and minimizing the "risk window" before an attack impacts production.
- Targeted OT and IoT visibility and validation: OT and IoT environments demand specialized attention, and downtime can mean upwards of 2 million dollars of lost revenue. Hadrian provides crucial visibility into incidental internet-facing IoT and OT assets. Our solutions detect misconfigurations and exposures to industrial control systems, preventing lateral movement into sensitive production networks. Misconfigured Modbus/TCP open on the DMZ? Hadrian flags it before an adversary does. This protects against physical consequences like equipment damage and safety hazards, addressing concerns like an over-pressurized boiler, a robotic arm run-amok, or a batch that fails quality assurance and ends up in the supply-chain.
- Third-party and supply chain exposure mitigation: Manufacturing’s reliance on complex supply chains means a breach in a third-party vendor system can halt production. Hadrian identifies and monitors exposures within third-party vendor systems and partner integrations, preventing them from becoming a weak link that introduces cascading exposures. Third-party vendor breach? We spot the exposed SFTP server outside your network.
- Intellectual Property protection: Safeguarding valuable IP (designs, processes, trade secrets) is paramount. Hadrian’s proactive offensive security continuously identifies and validates exposures that could lead to data exfiltration, protecting your most critical assets from adversaries. Hadrian can pinpoint where attackers are likely to make their initial access, giving you actionable insights about the security of your “crown jewels”
- Compliance reporting automation: Manufacturers are facing increasing regulatory pressure due to the enforcement of the following standards – National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-82, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 62443, Network and Information Security 2 (NIS2) Directive, Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) – and more. Hadrian streamlines compliance efforts by providing automated reporting and clear evidence of continuous security posture improvement, helping avoid fines and demonstrate diligence. For example, for IEC 62443-3-3 “SR 3.1 – System Hardening,” Hadrian can verify external services are correctly hardened. That means you can walk into your next board meeting with figures that demonstrably show how your security posture has become more than just a cost center. In the first year of use, Hadrian customers see an average $240,000 reduction in SOC team overtime expenses.
Hadrian saves upwards of 1200 engineer hours in the first year
Hadrian provides the precision, speed, and scale required to secure modern manufacturing. Our agentless, zero-touch deployment means you can onboard in minutes and receive actionable insights the same day, with no added operational overhead. This approach is particularly valuable as it requires no maintenance windows or change-control tickets, because traffic never exceeds what is already allowed inbound. We deliver enterprise-grade adversary emulation without requiring additional headcount, freeing up your lean teams for strategic OT security initiatives. Hadrian saves upwards of 1200 engineer hours in the first year of use for customers.
By shifting to Hadrian’s proactive, AI-driven offensive security, manufacturers can confidently navigate the complexities of digital transformation. Our approach directly contributes to revenue protection, operational efficiency, and a strengthened competitive position. We empower you to proactively prevent incidents, simplify compliance, and build truly resilient systems that keep production lines running without interruption. This also means Hadrian can slot into existing OT security tooling (like Nozomi or Claroty) as a pre-border layer, preventing adversaries from ever reaching those systems. Findings can be exported via API and sent to their Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) / Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) compatible platforms. Importantly, if a zone is truly air-gapped or uses one-way gateways, Hadrian’s remit stops at the routable edge, respecting existing stringent isolation controls.
The era of segmented networks is over. Every internet-facing OT or IoT device is a potential entry point, demanding a new security structure. The solution lies not in more reactive tools, but in a proactive, offensive security strategy that continuously maps, validates, and prioritizes exposures from an attacker's perspective. By adopting this approach, manufacturers can build truly secure systems, ensure uninterrupted operations, protect their intellectual property, and navigate the complexities of digital transformation with confidence.
If you’re interested in learning more about Hadrian’s agentic pentesting platform, see how manufacturer WeatherTech was able to reduce alert noise and shore up their operational and informational security capabilities. You can also book a personalized security assessment with us at any time.
