Networks & Security in Wrexham

What is different about networks & security in Wrexham

Manufacturing around Wrexham and Deeside brings a problem most offices never face: machines that cannot be patched. Production equipment often runs software the manufacturer stopped supporting years ago, on an operating system nobody will update, and it cannot simply be replaced because it is doing its job. The answer is not to fix those machines but to isolate them, so the thing that cannot be secured is also the thing nothing else can reach.

That separation between operational technology and the office network is the single most valuable piece of work on a site like this, and it is frequently absent. Where a quality system, a machine controller and the finance PC all sit on one network, an ordinary office infection becomes a production stoppage, which costs a different order of money.

Questions we get asked in Wrexham

Our production equipment runs software that cannot be updated. What can we do?

Isolate it rather than try to fix it. Machines that cannot be patched go on their own segment that cannot reach the office network or the internet, with tightly controlled access for the people who genuinely need it. You are accepting that the machine is vulnerable and making sure that no longer matters to anything else.

Why separate the factory network from the office one?

Because otherwise an ordinary office incident becomes a production stoppage. Ransomware arriving by email on an office PC will reach machine controllers and quality systems if nothing stands between them, and the cost then is measured in lost output rather than lost documents. It is the highest-value change on most manufacturing sites.