A Central Texas industrial manufacturer brought new production equipment online safely after CMIT Solutions of Austin Central designed and implemented a custom subnet, a 35-hour network engineering project that isolated the manufacturing line from the corporate network and delivered operational flexibility without importing operational technology (OT) risk into the rest of the business.
Modern manufacturing is increasingly digital. As production lines add networked sensors, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the convergence of OT and information technology (IT) creates real opportunity and equally real exposure. This manufacturer wanted the monitoring and control benefits of connected equipment without handing an attacker a path from the plant floor into corporate systems.
Project Snapshot
- Client: Industrial manufacturer
- Location: Central Texas
- Service: IT Network Support
- Scope: 35 hours — custom subnet design, firewall segmentation, documentation, and connectivity validation
- Outcome: New manufacturing line online on schedule with OT and IT traffic fully separated
The Challenge
Industrial equipment speaks protocols and runs operating systems designed for reliability and real-time performance, not for cybersecurity. PLCs, human-machine interfaces (HMIs), and industrial sensors frequently run legacy firmware with no patch support, published vulnerabilities, and no meaningful authentication.
The new line required network connectivity for monitoring and control, but giving that equipment unrestricted access to the corporate network would have created an unacceptable exposure, effectively placing unpatchable devices on the same network as financial systems, email, and file shares.
The Solution
Rather than treating segmentation as an afterthought, CMIT Solutions of Austin Central designed the subnet architecture before the equipment was commissioned. The manufacturing devices were placed on a dedicated subnet with firewall rules governing exactly which traffic may cross between OT and IT, and internet access for those devices was controlled and monitored instead of open by default.
The design was then proven in practice. Every piece of equipment was tested for the connectivity it genuinely needs, and the resulting architecture was documented with diagrams so future additions to the line can be attached to a known design rather than improvised.
What We Delivered
- Custom subnet designed for manufacturing equipment isolation
- Firewall rules configured to restrict traffic between OT and IT networks
- Internet access for manufacturing devices controlled and monitored
- Network documentation and architecture diagrams produced
- Testing and validation of connectivity for all equipment
The Results
The new manufacturing equipment came online on schedule, fully connected and fully operational, with no security compromises accepted along the way. Because the segmentation was designed in advance, the production schedule was never held hostage to a networking problem discovered at commissioning.
The security value compounds over time. Network segmentation is one of the most effective mitigations against ransomware, a threat that continues to concentrate on manufacturers precisely because unplanned downtime costs them tens of thousands of dollars per hour. Establishing proper OT and IT boundaries means an incident on one side of the line no longer becomes an incident everywhere.
Key Takeaways
- Plant floor devices are rarely patchable, so isolate them rather than trusting them.
- Design network segmentation before equipment is commissioned; retrofitting isolation costs more and usually costs production time.
- Segmentation limits blast radius, which is why it remains one of the strongest and cheapest defenses against ransomware in manufacturing.
Adding connected equipment at your Austin area facility? Reach out to CMIT Solutions of Austin Central about IT Network Support and network segmentation.
