Many manufacturing sites and industrial facilities are critical to national supply chains and economic security. Cybercriminals exploit converged IT and OT vulnerabilities across production environments, risking operational shutdowns, IP theft, and cascading consequences across dependent industries.
Modern manufacturing facilities are complex cyber-physical environments where production lines, SCADA systems, robotics, and environmental controls operate as networked OT assets alongside corporate IT systems. Compromise can result in production shutdowns, safety incidents, IP exfiltration, and supply chain disruption. NIS2 and IEC 62443 extend responsibility for these risks to leadership across operators of essential and important entities.
FireBreak™ enables surgical containment by isolating production OT from IT-layer compromises without triggering costly line shutdowns, enforcing zero-trust vendor and contractor access, and protecting legacy PLCs and controllers through hardware-level segmentation backed by deterministic, immutable audit logs.
Manufacturing facilities are no longer purely physical production environments. They are converged cyber-physical systems where PLCs, SCADA platforms, robotics controllers, and environmental monitoring systems operate as networked OT assets, often connected to corporate IT for operational visibility and remote management.
NIS2 and IEC 62443 have effectively erased the traditional boundary between IT and OT security responsibility. Board-level accountability now extends to production floor systems. Compromise can result in catastrophic line stoppages, equipment damage, safety failures, and the loss of proprietary process IP.
CISOs and plant managers face the same “Control Dilemma”: when a fast-moving attack targets OT through the corporate IT network, the only options are to risk compromise of production systems or trigger a costly, disruptive shutdown.
Lateral movement from ransomware on the corporate IT network into OT systems managing production lines, robotics, and environmental controls.
Third-party contractor and vendor VPN connections create persistent, unmonitored backdoors into production and SCADA environments.
Legacy PLCs and ICS controllers running on outdated or proprietary operating systems cannot be easily patched, replaced, or protected with endpoint security software.
Use Case 1 — Surgical IT/OT Containment
FireBreak™ is installed at the boundary between corporate IT and production OT networks. Upon ransomware detection, SOAR sends an authenticated command and the Layer 1 connection is physically severed in milliseconds. Production systems continue operating safely in island mode, maintaining line continuity and environmental controls while SOC teams remediate the threat.
Use Case 2 — Zero-Trust Third-Party and Contractor Access
Vendor and contractor maintenance ports remain physically disconnected by default. When access is required, an out-of-band command enables a time-limited connection with full logging. The port is automatically severed once the maintenance window concludes.
Use Case 3 — Legacy ICS/PLC Compensating Control
Vulnerable but essential controllers operate in a disconnected-by-default state, with scheduled connection windows allowing only essential telemetry while remaining invisible and unreachable at all other times.
Regulatory alignment supports NIS2 all-hazards mandates for operators of essential entities and IEC 62443 security-level requirements for industrial automation and control systems.
If you're still in search of answers, we encourage you to explore our informative FAQ section.
