Most small and mid-sized manufacturers already have some kind of vulnerability management program. The problem usually isn’t that nothing is happening. It’s that a few common gaps quietly cancel out the work that’s already being done, leaving real risk sitting in plain sight long after the last scan report has been filed away.
Why Manufacturers Keep Missing the Same Vulnerability Management Gaps
Cybersecurity in manufacturing has become more complicated over the last few years. Plants are more connected than ever. Production systems talk to business systems. Suppliers have remote access. Machines that were never designed for the internet are now connected to modern networks.
That creates opportunity for attackers.
According to IBM’s latest X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, manufacturing has remained one of the most targeted industries for cyberattacks for several years because operational downtime creates pressure and can quickly affect revenue and customer commitments.
The reality is that most manufacturers don’t have one giant security problem. They have several smaller problems that build on each other.
Here are the seven vulnerability management gaps that show up again and again when someone takes a close look at a manufacturer’s environment.
1. Missing a Full Asset Inventory of OT and IoT Devices
You can’t manage vulnerabilities in devices your team doesn’t know exist. Most vulnerability management programs start with laptops, servers, and cloud applications. Then they stop there.
A manufacturing floor runs on much more than that. There are sensors, programmable logic controllers, barcode scanners, cameras, and legacy equipment that may have been in place for fifteen years or longer. If those systems are missing from your inventory, they aren’t being scanned and they definitely aren’t getting patched.
This is why many security projects start with visibility first. Vancord’s work in ICS Security & OT Protection focuses heavily on understanding the entire environment before making recommendations.
You can’t protect what you can’t see.
2. Treating Vulnerability Scanning as a Once a Year Checkbox
A lot of SMB manufacturers run one scan a year, usually right before an audit, then move on. The problem is that vulnerabilities don’t wait for next year’s scan.
New vulnerabilities get discovered every single week. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency adds new entries to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog almost daily.
A scan from last year tells you almost nothing about your risk today.
Cyberattacks against manufacturers continue to rise, keeping the industry among the most targeted sectors worldwide. Vancord explored the reasons behind this trend in Why Manufacturing Companies Are Prime Ransomware Targets post.
This is why many manufacturers are moving toward Continuous Vulnerability Management programs that provide regular visibility into new exposures instead of relying on a single annual report.
3. Letting Production Schedules Decide When You Patch
Nobody wants to shut down production to install security updates.That’s understandable. The problem is that temporary delays often turn into permanent delays.
A critical vulnerability gets discovered. The next maintenance window is scheduled for three months later. Then another project takes priority. Suddenly a known issue has been sitting in the environment for half a year.
Attackers don’t wait for your maintenance schedule.
Good vulnerability management balances operational requirements with security needs. Sometimes network segmentation, temporary controls, or phased updates can reduce risk without disrupting production. The key is having a plan instead of simply postponing the work.
4. Treating Every Vulnerability the Same
Not every vulnerability deserves the same urgency, but plenty of SMB security programs treat a long list of findings as one big to-do list, tackled in whatever order someone gets to first. That’s almost never true.
A high severity finding on a machine with no internet access is a very different problem than a medium severity issue sitting on something connected to the outside world. Without a way to weigh real exploitability against actual exposure, teams burn time on low-risk fixes while the genuinely dangerous ones sit untouched.
This is one of the reasons many organizations begin with a Vulnerability Assessment. The goal isn’t to fix everything immediately. The goal is to understand what creates the most business risk.
If reading through this list feels less like background reading and more like a description of your own facility, that’s worth a closer look. Vancord’s security GAP analysis walks through your current environment and shows you honestly where these gaps might already be costing you.
5. Leaving Suppliers and Vendors Outside Your Vulnerability Management Program
Manufacturers depend heavily on third parties. Equipment vendors need remote access. Software providers need connections into systems. Suppliers exchange data every day. Every one of those relationships creates risk.
The share of breaches involving a third party doubled in the past year, climbing from 15% to 30% of incidents, according to Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report, which means a vendor’s weak security can become your problem just as easily as your own. This is exactly why Supply Chain Cybersecurity has become such an important topic for manufacturers.
The question isn’t whether your vendors have access.
The question is whether you know exactly what that access looks like.
6. Never Verifying That the Fix Actually Worked
This happens more often than people realize. A vulnerability gets flagged, someone applies a patch or changes a setting, and the item gets marked closed. Nobody goes back to confirm the fix actually worked the way it was supposed to.
Sometimes a patch only addresses part of the issue, or a configuration change quietly introduces a new problem nobody noticed. Penetration testing is one of the more reliable ways to check this, since a tester trying to actually exploit a supposedly fixed issue finds out fast whether it’s really closed or just looks closed on a report.
Vancord’s penetration testing lead, Dylan Marquis, talks about this often on the CyberSound episode “Penetration Testing: How It Reveals Real Security Risks,” explaining why organizations are frequently surprised by what testing uncovers.
7. Running IT and OT as Two Separate Vulnerability Programs
This may be the biggest gap of all. A lot of manufacturers have one team handling IT security and a completely different team, or no team at all, handling operational technology. The two rarely talk to each other about vulnerabilities, even though attackers move between IT and OT environments constantly once they get a foothold.
Berlin Steel, one of Vancord’s manufacturing clients, talked about the value of having a partner that understood both their business and technical environments well enough to plan ahead instead of simply reacting to problems.
One unified view of risk is often what turns vulnerability management from a checklist into an effective program.
What Good Vulnerability Management Looks Like
Strong vulnerability management programs don’t try to fix everything overnight.
They focus on three things:
- Knowing what assets exist.
- Prioritizing vulnerabilities based on real business risk.
- Continuously reviewing the environment as it changes.
Many manufacturers start by completing a Cybersecurity Readiness & Risk Assessment to understand where they stand today and where improvements will have the greatest impact.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is making it harder for small problems to become expensive ones.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is vulnerability management for manufacturers?
Vulnerability management is the ongoing process of finding, ranking, and fixing security weaknesses across your IT and OT systems before attackers find them first. For manufacturers, that means covering business systems and the equipment running the production floor, not just one or the other.
How often should an SMB manufacturer run a vulnerability scan?
Quarterly scanning is a reasonable starting point for most small and mid-sized manufacturers, though environments with internet-facing systems or sensitive data often need more frequent checks. An annual scan alone leaves a wide window where new vulnerabilities go unnoticed.
What’s the difference between vulnerability management and a vulnerability assessment?
A vulnerability assessment is a single, point-in-time review of your systems. Vulnerability management is the continuous program built around that, scanning regularly, ranking findings by real risk, and confirming fixes actually worked.
Why are manufacturers targeted so often?
Manufacturers depend on continuous operations. Attackers know that downtime can quickly affect revenue and create pressure to restore systems as fast as possible.
Do small manufacturers really get targeted by cyberattacks?
Yes, and increasingly so. Attackers often see smaller manufacturers as easier entry points into larger supply chains, with fewer dedicated security resources standing in the way.
Don’t Wait for a Small Gap to Become a Big Problem
Every manufacturer has vulnerabilities. The difference is whether you discover them before someone else does.
If you’re not sure where your biggest gaps are hiding, request a security assessment and Vancord’s team can help you understand your current exposure and build a practical plan to improve it.
You can also explore how Vancord helps manufacturers strengthen cybersecurity while keeping production moving.