Industries
Managed IT and Security for Manufacturers
On a plant floor, an IT problem is a production problem. Support has to work around runs and shifts, the boundary between the plant network and the business network has to actually hold, and equipment older than the network still has to keep making parts.
The operational reality
Production time is the constraint everything else bends around
In an office, a workstation that needs twenty minutes of attention costs twenty minutes of one person's time. On a production line, the same interruption can idle a cell, break a run, and put a committed ship date at risk. That asymmetry is the single most important thing an IT provider has to understand about a plant, and it is the thing most providers get wrong first, by scheduling maintenance for their own convenience.
The second reality is the boundary between operational technology and information technology, which is almost never as clean as the network diagram suggests. Engineering workstations sit on both sides. Historians pull data from the floor and publish it to the business network. A vendor needs remote access to a machine and it gets set up quickly under production pressure. Quality systems bridge the two by design. Each of these is a legitimate business need and each is a path across a boundary that was supposed to be closed.
The third is equipment age. Machines are capital assets with twenty-year lives, and the controller attached to one is frequently running an operating system that has been unsupported for years, on a version pinned by the machine vendor. Replacing it is not an IT decision. That means the security answer is containment and monitoring rather than upgrade, and a provider who responds by insisting everything be patched to current has not understood the situation.
The problem
What we find in plants
These conditions are common enough that we look for them specifically.
Flat networks from floor to office
The plant and business networks are one broadcast domain, so anything that reaches a laptop can reach a machine controller.
Uncontrolled vendor remote access
Equipment suppliers have standing remote connections set up under production pressure, with shared credentials and no logging.
Unsupported controller operating systems
Machines depend on software the vendor pinned years ago and cannot be patched without breaking the equipment or its warranty.
Maintenance scheduled against production
Updates and reboots land during runs because the provider works to a standard cycle rather than to the shift pattern.
No recovery plan for machine configuration
Controller programs, tooling data, and machine parameters exist in one place, and rebuilding them means calling the vendor and waiting.
Customer security requirements arriving
A prime or major customer imposes security obligations the plant has neither the staff nor the documentation to satisfy.
Scope
What we do for manufacturers
IT-side work, scheduled around production, with an explicit boundary at control-system engineering.
Plant and business network segmentation
Separate the production network from the business network and control precisely what is allowed to cross between them.
Legacy system containment
Isolate equipment that cannot be patched, restrict its communication to what the process requires, and monitor the boundary.
Vendor remote access control
Replace standing shared connections with brokered, individually attributed, time-limited access that produces a log.
Production-aware maintenance scheduling
Plan patching and reboots around runs, shifts, and changeovers, with staged testing before anything reaches the floor.
Machine configuration backup
Capture controller programs, parameters, and engineering workstation images so a failure is a restore rather than a rebuild.
ERP and MES support
Keep the systems that schedule, track, and cost production available, including the interfaces between them and the floor.
Endpoint and identity management
Managed endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and least-privilege access across office, engineering, and shop-floor users.
Monitoring and response
Watch for activity crossing the plant boundary or reaching systems that should never be talking to anything unexpected.
Tested backup and recovery
Protected, isolated backups with restores exercised against recovery targets derived from what downtime actually costs you.
Supply-chain security requirements
Work through customer security questionnaires and, where federal work is involved, the control frameworks those contracts impose.
Our approach
How we start in a plant
On site first. A plant cannot be understood accurately from a network scan and a phone call.
- 01
Walk the floor
See the equipment, the controllers, the engineering workstations, and how people actually move data between the floor and the office.
- 02
Map the boundary
Document what crosses between the plant and business networks, including the vendor connections and quality-system paths.
- 03
Stabilize
Address the items where a single failure would stop production, and put containment around what cannot be patched.
- 04
Operate
Run ongoing support and monitoring on a schedule built around your production calendar, and improve from there.
Business outcomes
What changes on the floor
Measured against production, which is the only measure that matters here.
Fewer unplanned interruptions
Proactive maintenance and monitoring reduce the failures that stop a line without warning and without a plan.
Maintenance that fits your schedule
Updates land during changeovers and planned downtime rather than in the middle of a run.
A boundary that holds
A compromise on the business side does not have a direct path to the equipment that makes your product.
Recoverable machine configuration
A failed controller or engineering workstation is restored from a known-good copy instead of reconstructed from memory.
Answers for your customers
Security questionnaires from primes and major customers can be answered accurately without stalling the relationship.
A path to federal work
If defense or federal contracts are part of your growth plan, the control and documentation groundwork is already in place.
Fit
Who this is for
- Small and mid-sized manufacturers where unplanned downtime has a direct and measurable cost
- Plants with equipment that cannot be patched, replaced, or taken offline on an IT schedule
- Manufacturers receiving security questionnaires or contract requirements from primes and major customers
- Suppliers supporting defense or federal programs alongside commercial production
- Multi-site operations that have accumulated inconsistent network and support practices
- Organizations with a small internal IT presence carrying both office and plant responsibility
When it may not be the right fit
We would rather tell you up front than sell you something that will not help.
- Plants seeking control-system engineering, PLC programming, or safety-system validation, which we do not perform
- Operations that need deep OT and ICS security engineering as the primary scope of work
- Environments where maintenance access to production systems will not be granted under any schedule
Where our scope ends
We work on the IT side of the plant boundary. Segmentation, the systems that sit on the seam, identity, monitoring, backup, and the business systems around production are ours. Programming and tuning control systems, validating safety instrumented systems, and deep industrial control-system engineering are not, and we will say so rather than take the work. Those belong with your controls engineers and equipment vendors, and we coordinate with them.
Manufacturing environments are targeted specifically because downtime creates leverage. Ransomware operators know that a plant losing production has a compressed decision window, and design data and process knowledge have value to competitors and to state-aligned actors. That is why isolated, tested backups and a working plant boundary matter more here than almost any other control.
We publish no client names, plant counts, uptime percentages, or claims about years spent serving this sector. Where a claim cannot be substantiated, we leave it out. Ask us technical questions about your specific environment during the walkthrough; the answers will tell you more than a logo would.
Manufacturing questions
What plant leadership asks us
How do you patch systems without stopping production?
By treating the production schedule as the constraint rather than as an inconvenience. That means knowing which machines cannot be rebooted during a run, grouping maintenance into windows that match your shift pattern and changeovers, staging and testing updates before they reach anything on the floor, and accepting that some systems will be handled during planned downtime rather than on a standard cycle. It requires a provider willing to schedule around your operation instead of its own.
We have machines running unsupported operating systems. What are our options?
This is common and it is usually not solvable by upgrading, because the operating system is tied to the machine controller and the vendor. The practical approach is compensating controls: isolate those systems on their own network segment, restrict what can talk to them to only what is genuinely required, remove internet access and email from them entirely, monitor the traffic crossing that boundary, and make sure their configuration is backed up so a failed machine can be restored rather than rebuilt from memory.
Do you work on PLCs, SCADA, and control systems?
We do not perform control-system engineering. Programming PLCs, tuning SCADA logic, and validating safety systems belong with your controls engineers and equipment vendors, and a provider claiming otherwise should be questioned closely. What we do is the IT side of the boundary: segmentation between the plant network and the business network, managing what crosses it, securing the engineering workstations and historians that sit on the seam, and monitoring for activity that should not be there.
Our customer sent a security questionnaire. Why are they asking us?
Larger manufacturers and primes increasingly assess the security of their suppliers, because a supplier compromise can stop their line as surely as their own. If you supply into defense or federal programs, those requirements arrive as contract clauses with specific control sets. If you supply commercially, they usually arrive as questionnaires or vendor security addenda. Either way, the ability to answer accurately and quickly has become part of being a supplier.
What does downtime actually cost us?
That is the number worth calculating before deciding on recovery targets, and most manufacturers have never worked it out precisely. It includes idle labor across the affected lines, lost throughput against committed orders, expedited freight to recover a schedule, scrap or rework from an interrupted process, and the customer relationship cost of a missed date. Once that figure exists, arguments about recovery time objectives and redundancy stop being abstract.
Can you support multiple plants or a plant plus an office?
Yes. Multi-site manufacturers usually have the additional problem of inconsistency: each site accumulated its own network design, its own vendor relationships, and its own way of doing things, which makes both security and support harder. Bringing sites onto common identity, monitoring, and backup practices while respecting the equipment differences between them is a normal part of this work.
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Learn moreStart with a walkthrough of your plant
Show us the floor, the controllers, and the seam where the plant network meets the office. We will tell you where a single failure stops production and what it takes to change that.