Rarely ever do firms provide insight into manufacturing cybersecurity trends and best practices. Rather most cybersecurity advice is written for offices: protect the data, train the staff, buy the tool. However, our manufacturing and warehouse clients in Elk Grove Village, Aurora, Joliet, or Rockford, require a more specialized effort to protect business assets. Earlier this year, we discussed how industrial organizations are especially targeted with ransomware because it is easy to leverage the loss of prolonged machine downtime.
When ransomware hits a law firm, files get locked. When it hits a plant, the line stops. Orders slip, shipments miss their windows, and customers start calling your competitors. The ransom note is rarely the most expensive part of the incident. The idle shift is. For 30 years, our clients throughout Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana
Why Manufacturers are Different
Your most important systems are your oldest.
CNC machines, PLCs, and SCADA systems often run on software that can’t be patched without a production shutdown, and some can’t be patched at all. A standard office security playbook (“update everything immediately”) can break the equipment that makes you money and lead to longer downtimes.
IT and OT are converging.
Machines that once sat isolated now connect to the network for scheduling, quality reporting, and remote vendor support. These interconnected components are key for business efficiency but provide access points to critical machines.
Vendors have keys to your floor.
Equipment manufacturers and integrators often keep remote access for troubleshooting. That access is frequently shared, rarely reviewed, and almost never revoked when a contract ends.
Your customers are watching.
If you supply defense, aerospace, or automotive customers, you may already face NIST 800-171 or CMMC requirements flowing down through the supply chain. Even if you don’t yet, expect security questionnaires to become a condition of winning work.
The Uptime-First Approach to Manufacturing Networks
Here’s how we’d build a manufacturing security program, in order of priority.
Map the plant before you protect it.
You can’t defend what you can’t see. Start with an inventory of every device on the network, including the machines nobody in IT has touched in a decade. Label each one by how much production depends on it. That’s why Infinity Technologies starts any industrial partnership with a free site visit and consultation. We map your facility to highlight any low visibility sites, barriers to network connection, and key vulnerabilities to incorporate those details into our disaster plan. Click here to schedule your free consultation today!
Segment the network so one infection stays one infection.
This is the single highest-value control for manufacturers. Separating the plant-floor network from the office network means a phishing email in accounting can’t reach your production line. Done well, an incident in one area becomes a contained problem instead of a plant-wide shut down. Infinity Technologies individually designs, documents, and manages the entire network infrastructure, so we can manage segments of the network swiftly. Radically speeding up the troubleshooting process.
Protect what can’t be patched.
When a legacy machine can’t be updated, you wrap it in compensating controls. That means isolating it, restricting who and what can talk to it, and monitoring its traffic for anything unusual. The goal is to make it safe where it stands, not to demand a replacement you can’t afford this year. During our risk assessment, we will point out all of the vulnerable industrial equipment.
Lock down vendor and remote access.
Every outside party should have individual credentials, multi-factor authentication, and access only when they need it. Review the list quarterly. If you can’t say who has access to your floor right now, that’s your first project. Infinity Technologies is a total service MSP that integrates a user-friendly remote door entry software and CCTV system into the entire technology ecosystem. Our clients take advantage of our mobile entry, customized key cards, or biometric entry that elevates the security of their facility.
Build backups around recovery time, not just recovery.
Having backups is not the same as being able to restore them quickly. Test the full restore, including machine configurations, recipes, and programs, and time it. If recovery takes four days and your business can survive one, you’ve found a gap worth fixing before an attacker finds it for you.
Rehearse the bad day
Run a tabletop exercise with operations, not just IT. Who decides to shut the line down? Who calls the customer? Who talks to your insurer? The plants that recover fastest are the ones that practiced. Infinity Technologies demos these situations independently to ensure that our clients are always prepared for the worst.
Train the floor, not just the front office
Supervisors, line leads, and maintenance techs use shared workstations and USB drives, and they get targeted too. Short, practical training in plain language works far better than an annual slide deck. We are happy to set up remote or onsite trainings for the entire staff, so everyone gets professional and expert training on manufacturing cybersecurity best practices.
What good looks like
A well-protected manufacturer isn’t one with the most security tools. It’s one where:
- Leadership can state, in hours, how long each critical system can be down
- The plant and office networks are separated
- Every vendor connection is known, authenticated, and reviewed
- Backups have been tested against a stopwatch
- Production, IT, and leadership have rehearsed the same plan together
Infinity Technologies Understands Manufacturing Matters
Generic IT providers treat a plant like a big office. A partner who understands production schedules will plan maintenance windows around your shifts, won’t push a patch that stops a machine mid-run, and will speak the language of operations as well as security.
At Infinity Technologies, we help Chicagoland manufacturers elevate their in-house IT teams or completely manage their technology ecosystem, so security supports production instead of slowing it down.