A stopped line is measured in hours, not tickets.
Production, despatch and invoicing depend on systems that were never designed to be attacked. LANTEK keeps them running, watches them outside shift hours, and can prove what was in place when somebody asks.
Why is manufacturing a target at all?
Because downtime is expensive and obvious, which makes the operator more likely to pay quickly. An attacker does not need to understand what you make. They need to know that a plant which cannot despatch is losing money every hour and that somebody will do the arithmetic before the weekend.
The second reason is the supply chain. A manufacturer sits between suppliers and customers, and a compromised mailbox in the middle of that chain gives an attacker a credible position from which to redirect a payment.
What usually goes wrong first?
The office network, not the plant. Ransomware that reaches the file server takes out the orders, the invoices, the despatch notes and the accounting history at the same time, and production stops shortly afterwards because nobody can say what to make or where it goes.
The practical control is segmentation, so that one compromised workstation in the office cannot reach everything, together with backup that somebody has actually restored from rather than merely scheduled.
We have older equipment that cannot be patched. What then?
Older equipment is normal in manufacturing and it does not have to be replaced to be defensible. The approach is to identify what cannot be patched, record why, isolate it on the network so it cannot be reached from the general office environment, and monitor what talks to it. That is a documented compensating control rather than an unmanaged risk.
End of life software flagging and asset registers sit under the IDENTIFY function of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which is set out on the Compliant by Design page.
Does POPIA apply to a manufacturer?
Yes. POPIA applies to any South African business holding personal information about identifiable people, which includes employee records, payroll, health and safety files and customer contact data. Section 19 requires appropriate technical and organisational measures, and the maximum administrative fine is R10 million.
Has LANTEK worked with industrial businesses?
Yes. HYTORC South Africa has been a LANTEK client for the past fifteen years, and their branch manager describes LANTEK as their preferred service provider. LANTEK has also delivered multi-site infrastructure work at Cato Ridge and Scottburgh for Hibiscus Hospitals.
More of the track record is on the clients page.
Before you call
Do you support systems on the factory floor?
Our plant runs outside office hours. Does support?
How long would it take to get us running after ransomware?
We have more than one site. Can you cover all of them?
A free dark web scan
and thirty minutes.
We scan for your company email addresses, passwords and customer data in the places stolen and leaked data gets traded, then spend thirty minutes walking you through what came back and what it actually means. No pressure, no jargon, no obligation. You keep the report either way.
Worried about what it takes to move?
Changing IT provider is the single biggest reason businesses stay somewhere they have outgrown. We plan the move around your working week, and we help carry the cost of getting across. Ask us how that works when we speak.