IT and cyber security that understands the shop floor, not just the office
For manufacturers and engineering firms who can't afford production downtime — and increasingly can't win work without proving their cyber security. We build the security around how a manufacturing business actually runs.
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The problems we solve for manufacturing & engineering smes
Your risk lives on the shop floor, not the office
A £500k CNC machine is often driven by a PC on an OS a decade out of support that can't be patched without voiding the warranty. That OT/IT crossover is the gap a generic MSP never sees.
You now have to prove it to win work
Defence and aerospace primes push Cyber Essentials down their supply chains (DCPP / DEFCON 658), PPN 014 mandates it for public contracts and subcontractors, and automotive is moving to TISAX. No certification, no place on the bid.
A missed certification is a lost contract
These requirements renew every year, and a tender deadline is the worst possible moment to discover you're not ready. It's not a security problem — it's lost work.
Your design and production data is the business
CAD, CAM, PLM and your ERP/MRP are your IP and your production schedule. Losing them to ransomware doesn't stop your email — it stops the line.
How we help
The OT/IT boundary, done properly
Segmenting the shop-floor network from the office so a machine controller stuck on old Windows can't become the way in. You can't always patch the machine PC — you can wall it off.
Cyber Essentials, sorted and kept current
We get you certification-ready against the five controls, then keep you ready year on year, and help you evidence the wider requirements primes ask for.
Design & production data protection
Your CAD/CAM/PLM and ERP/MRP backed up, access-controlled and recoverable — because losing your IP or your schedule is losing the business.
Uptime that respects production
Updates and maintenance scheduled around shifts, not dropped on you mid-run. We treat shop-floor downtime as lost output, because that's what it is.
We look after the design and production stack as seriously as the email and laptops — we support it, we don't replace it.
Why Smart Path IT
On the doorstep of the cluster
West Yorkshire based — a short hop up the M1 from South Yorkshire's advanced-manufacturing cluster (the AMID, AMRC and the SME engineering base around it).
Cyber Essentials certified
We hold Cyber Essentials ourselves (verifiable via the IASME registry) — the baseline we help you reach is one we live by.
Security-first, with real incident response
Vulnerability reporting and incident response are core services — because ransomware that reaches a manufacturer stops the line, not just the inbox.
Frequently asked questions
We've got machines running Windows 7 (or older) — does that fail Cyber Essentials?
Not automatically, but unsupported operating systems are the single most common sticking point. The answer is rarely 'replace the machine' — it's isolating those devices from the rest of the network so they're out of scope and out of harm's way. We do this a lot.
Do we have to certify to keep supplying the primes?
Increasingly, yes. Defence and aerospace supply chains push cyber requirements down through every tier, with Cyber Essentials as the usual baseline. If your customers haven't asked yet, they will — and it's better to be ready than scrambling against a bid deadline.
Can you work around production — we can't stop the line for IT?
That's the point. We schedule everything around your shifts and treat shop-floor downtime as lost output, not an inconvenience.
Do you understand our CAD/ERP systems, or just office IT?
Both. We look after the design and production stack — SolidWorks, Autodesk, Siemens, Epicor, SYSPRO and the rest — as seriously as the email and laptops.
Prove it before a tender forces the question
Get a free Cyber Essentials gap-check — see exactly which of the five controls would stop you certifying today, before a customer or a tender asks.