Why manufacturers work with us
Manufacturing IT has a different operating tempo than office IT. Production lines start at 6am. ERP slowdowns cascade into back orders. A ransomware event on Monday is a measurable cost on the income statement by Wednesday. Most MSPs serving generic SMBs don’t understand what they’re signing up for when they take a manufacturer as a client.
Our manufacturing clients include 25-person job-shops running everything off a single ERP, growing 80-person contract manufacturers managing CAD-heavy engineering workstations alongside production-floor controllers, and mid-size companies in regulated supply chains (automotive, aerospace, defense) whose customer audits drive their security-investment calendar. The patterns repeat: protect the heartbeat, segment the network, document the controls.
What’s included for manufacturers
Every engagement starts with 360SmartIT — managed endpoints, EDR, patching, support — and layers in the components that match production reality:
- Cyber Essentials — phishing simulation calibrated for vendor-impersonation and supplier-payment-redirect patterns, security awareness training timed around shift changes (production staff don’t read email at 9am like office workers do), dark-web monitoring of leadership accounts.
- Backup & Protect — endpoint + ERP-server backup with WORM-equivalent retention, segmented backup architecture (ransomware can’t reach the backup vault), drill-tested recovery with documented RTO/RPO. The first artifact a cyber-insurance underwriter will ask for.
- Compliance Hub — control mapping for the frameworks your customers ask about (NIST 800-171 for DOD suppliers, ISO 27001 for European customers, AS9100 supporting evidence for aerospace, IATF 16949 supporting evidence for automotive), evidence collection and refresh on a quarterly cadence.
- Priority Support — 15-minute SLA on critical (because Monday-morning ERP slowness is critical), named technical lead, quarterly review with your operations leadership.
ERP integrations + back-office systems
We work alongside the ERP systems most manufacturers run — NetSuite, SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Acumatica, Epicor Kinetic, Infor SyteLine, Global Shop Solutions — not as ERP consultants but as the IT partner who keeps the surrounding stack stable. We protect the endpoints that touch your ERP, the identities that authenticate to it, the backups that protect against ransomware, and the network segmentation that keeps OT and IT in their lanes.
OT/IT segmentation is non-negotiable
Production-floor systems (PLCs, SCADA, MES, machine-tool controllers) cannot run modern endpoint protection. Treating them as if they could is how manufacturers get encrypted overnight. Our standard build segments OT from IT at the network level, restricts management access to OT to a hardened jump path, and monitors east-west traffic for the patterns that indicate lateral movement attempts. We don’t manage the OT systems themselves — that’s your equipment vendors’ or systems integrators’ job — but we make sure the office-IT side of the house can’t be the path attackers use to reach them.
When your insurance underwriter calls
Cyber insurance for manufacturers has tightened sharply over the past three years. Renewal questionnaires now run 50+ pages and explicitly require MFA enforcement, EDR deployment, segmented backups with offline copies, documented incident response, and tabletop exercises. We produce the artifacts — and we sit with you on the renewal call to talk to the underwriter about what’s actually deployed. Almost every renewal we participate in comes back with a flat or reduced premium.