What standardized remote access looks like in manufacturing

Remote access is already a key part of everyday manufacturing operations. Plants use it to troubleshoot production issues, support remote sites, connect external vendors, and keep critical systems running when the right expert isn’t on site.

The problem is that remote access can quickly become a patchwork in many manufacturing environments. Different plants use different tools. Suppliers bring their own methods. Legacy systems stay in place because they still work. Acquisitions add more complexity. And over time, what started as a practical workaround becomes something much harder to manage.

That’s why standardized remote access is such an urgent topic in manufacturing. But rather than introducing remote connectivity from scratch, we now need to focus on bringing more visibility, control, and security to it.

Why fragmented remote access becomes a serious problem

Fragmentation rarely happens because teams make poor decisions. More often, it’s the natural result of growth.

Say, for example, a manufacturer acquires another company and inherits its tooling. Or a machine builder installs a remote access setup for service. One team adopts a niche solution for a specific plant. Another retains a legacy platform because one person knows how it works. Each choice makes sense at the time. But together, it can become unworkable.

And the downside is not only technical, but also operational and organizational.

Felix Wirthmann, Director of Product Management at TeamViewer, put it like this: “If you have 10 different systems, you have to patch 10 different systems, configure 10 different systems, and stay expert in all of them. That increases the risk of mistakes and backdoors.”

And the stakes are high. When remote access to a business system goes wrong, the impact is serious. But when remote access to a production system goes wrong, the impact can be much, much worse. Among other things, a cyber incident can stop the line, damage equipment, delay deliveries, and create safety risks.

Fragmented access also makes it harder to answer some basic questions. Which external users can access which assets? Which systems still rely on outdated tooling? Which connections are properly logged? Which tools are tied to service contracts, and which are simply legacy?

And here’s the catch: If you can’t answer those questions, you're not really managing remote access. You're putting up with it.

Why IT is pushing for standardization—and why OT can resist it  

Manufacturing remote access often sits right at the fault line between IT and OT.

IT wants centralized control: one place to manage identities, define rules, apply zero-trust principles, and monitor activity across the environment. And that’s an entirely rational response to rising cyber risk, tighter regulations, and pressure from auditors, insurers, and leadership.

OT sees the world a bit differently. Production teams care first about uptime, safety, and operational continuity. They don’t want a new access model that slows support down, adds friction, or creates extra steps when a line is down.

That tension is real. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that IT and OT want opposite things. It just means they need a model that works for both.

And that, at its heart, is the real test of a standardized remote access strategy. It needs to give IT better governance without forcing OT into an impractical operating model.

What good standardization looks like

Standardization doesn’t mean every plant, team, and supplier works in exactly the same way. It means remote access operates within one clear framework.

In practice, that should include centralized permissions, consistent identity management, and rules that define who can access what, when, and under which conditions. It should also include strong logging and clear audit trails, so teams can see what happened during a session and prove compliance when needed.

For IT, that creates a single source of truth: one central place to control access, define security rules, and connect everything to user management, Active Directory, and identity providers.

For OT, it should still feel simple. The best remote access tool is the one people don’t have to think about when something needs fixing.

That’s why standardization matters. It replaces scattered, inconsistent access with a model that’s easier to govern, easier to scale, and easier to trust.

How to improve remote access without disrupting OT systems

This is where many standardization efforts fall apart. The business agrees that security needs to improve, but the rollout assumes every endpoint can be treated like a standard IT device.

In manufacturing, that’s rarely true. Some assets are legacy systems. Some are warranty sensitive. Some shouldn’t have third-party software installed on them at all. In those environments, the safest rollout is often the least intrusive one.

That’s why Agentless Access matters so much. As Felix explained, “With Agentless Access, you deploy a gateway on a server or virtual machine inside the customer’s network, but you don’t install anything on the target devices themselves.”

That approach is highly relevant on the shop floor, where manufacturers may not want anyone to touch the underlying components of a machine. Instead of changing each endpoint, teams can enable secure access through a controlled gateway. This is critical in industrial environments where human-machine interfaces and programmable logic controllers often don’t allow third-party installations.

Hybrid Conditional Access matters for a similar reason. In segmented or isolated networks, manufacturers still need a way to apply secure access controls without exposing sensitive systems more broadly. Here, standardization has to work with the architecture on the ground, not against it.