Global Manufacturer Secures Industrial IoT Networks with Segmentation
After completing a major network security assessment, a global food and beverage manufacturer uncovered an opportunity to further strengthen its security posture. Corporate IT leadership turned to Burwood Group to design and implement a network segmentation solution that would further mitigate risks to the company’s connected office and manufacturing plants.
The Challenge: Strengthen Security Across Diverse Devices
In its manufacturing facilities around the world, sales and administrative systems shared the network with devices on the manufacturing floor. While standard office applications received security updates automatically, other manufacturing systems within the organization required more protection. For this reason, the manufacturer sought to separate its manufacturing plants from its global business ecosystem. Burwood Group was tasked with implementing a network segmentation solution on a plant-by-plant basis, from the sites in the United States, to Asia, to South America.
In each case, the project team ensured that the manufacturer’s cyber security policies were applied according to industry standards, strengthening threat prevention, and enhancing incident response agility along the way.
The Solution: Plan and Execute Network Segmentation Across People, Process, and Technology
Partnering with the company’s internal teams, Burwood re-engineered the network, deploying Cisco router switches and next-generation Palo Alto Network firewalls to physically segment the plants from the business network. Corresponding application inspection was also enabled, giving the manufacturer visibility into the types of applications that stream across its global network, and allowing it to block rogue applications that eat away precious bandwidth.
Since manufacturing downtime often equates to lost revenue, Burwood Group took the time to understand the company’s people, process, and technology strategy to thoroughly prepare and efficiently deploy each solution. Network migrations occurred during planned downtime at each site, avoiding unnecessary outages and ensuring the plants could meet their product-to-market obligations.
The Outcome: Peace of Mind, Invaluable Visibility, More Mature Cyber Capability
““Burwood Group has been instrumental in helping us achieve a major milestone in our cybersecurity transformation and mitigating risks to our business. Through Burwood’s customer focused project management, technical expertise, and in-depth understanding of manufacturing systems, we were able to implement network segmentation with minimal impact to plant operations.””
While security was the company’s primary focus, its improved security posture has also tangibly reduced the operational cost of potential data breaches. Armed with better tools, growing knowledge, and its segmented networks, the global manufacturer is now better equipped to address cyber threats and sustain its drive towards higher market ambitions.
