Manufacturers have long lived with an uncomfortable truth: their most mission-critical systems are also those most susceptible to cyberattacks. Machines and the systems that power them can’t afford outages, disruptions, or downtime; production halts are expensive, and many plant-floor devices run on legacy operating systems that rarely receive updates, leaving industrial environments dangerously exposed.
For remote facilities where connectivity can be as limited as dial-up, even getting patches to the plant is a challenge. This prompts the need for smarter distribution models, such as peer-to-peer sharing on the local network, to keep systems current.
Manufacturers Lagging Behind Modern Threats
Today, a significant number of manufacturers still rely on some level of manual patching and according to research, 44 percent of patches are handled with an ad-hoc approach, making the process anything but streamlined.
For example, a specialty machine in need of patching may be under the control of the plant manager, which means that the IT team is only able to apply patches during times designated OK by the plant manager. As a result, IT teams must wait to apply patches until unscheduled maintenance windows when production is paused, even if the vulnerability is critical.
Over time, the delays in patching compound. As older Windows and Linux vulnerabilities remain unpatched, sometimes for years, attackers find new ways to exploit them. As industrial organizations struggle to keep pace with remediating unpatched vulnerabilities, they become susceptible to AI-driven attack tools, which bad actors typically leverage to exploit older, unpatched vulnerabilities.
AI is Accelerating Attacks Beyond Manual Defense
Cybercriminals leveraging AI in their attacks are transforming the threat landscape. Namely, the skill required to execute attacks drops dramatically with generative AI, which can analyze published vulnerabilities, understand them, and generate code to exploit them.
The ease of use and access to dark-web AI platforms is increasing the speed and volume of attacks, which is overwhelming traditional patching teams relying on manual processes. Humans can't keep up with today's threat volume, fueled by automated attacks. More than 40,000 CVEs were published in 2024, even before the number of exploits generated on top of them is considered.
Manual methods rooted in spreadsheets, approval chains, and maintenance windows negotiated over email cannot operate at the tempo required today. Each minute spent waiting for a sign-off or scheduling downtime provides an automated attacker another opportunity to move laterally across the network.
Automation and AEM are the Next Evolution
Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) guided by adaptive controls is the only realistic path forward for organizations. This process flips traditional patch management on its head.
Instead of looking at patches as they are released and then applying them, endpoints in the environment are first assessed to build a proactive strategy for maintaining updates. From here, the process becomes autonomous, and as new patches are released, preset automations ensure they distribute automatically.
However, human oversight and control are critical to this process. Should something go wrong, controls enable humans to take action and pause updates, roll back to previous versions, and maintain real-time control.
This duality of automation with oversight defines the next generation of industrial cybersecurity. It removes the administrative burden, slowing down response times, while still giving operational teams authority to intervene when safety or uptime is at risk.
Integration and Controls Across Every Level
When building resiliency into patch management strategies, beyond automation, integration is also essential to ensure that security data flows directly into remediation actions. While security teams can do great work discovering and identifying vulnerabilities, if the IT team isn't fixing them, organizations aren’t any safer.
However, if cybersecurity detection and response tools integrate with patch management solutions, the knowledge from the security tools can empower IT teams to prioritize and fix vulnerabilities. This approach is what's needed for organizations to succeed against automated attacks, and it extends into governance as well.
AEM controls should provide visibility for everyone, from the C-suite to the plant floor, ensuring that the same data drives both executive decisions and day-to-day operations. Tools designed to support all of these stakeholders by providing visibility and levels of control increase the likelihood of securing buy-in for decision-making when the time comes.
Looking Ahead to 2026
While attackers are succeeding in leveraging automation to execute more attacks, the tide of defense is turning, also thanks to AI and automation. For example, AI tools can read vulnerability data, ingest and enrich it, and create rules to automate the monitoring of these vulnerabilities.
For manufacturers, this means the era of manual patching and siloed systems is coming to an end. The environments that will thrive are those that blend automation, visibility, and adaptive control, enabling security that moves at machine speed without losing human judgment. For organizations to compete with the number of vulnerabilities and exploits emerging daily and weekly, they need tools that expedite remediation.
Automation with human oversight is the only way forward.
