IT Services and Cybersecurity for Small and Mid-Sized Manufacturers

In our home state the sector is large and mostly small-business: manufacturing produced 15.4% of North Carolina's GDP in 2022, and firms with fewer than 100 employees made up about 90% of the state's manufacturing establishments, according to NC Commerce. Companies of that size, wherever they are, are the ones Preferred Data is built for: too big to run IT off one person's spare time, too small to staff a full department.

• Managed IT: workstations, servers, Microsoft 365, helpdesk and planning on one monthly agreement
• Security: 24/7 detection and response, MFA, email protection and awareness training on every plan, see cybersecurity services
• Networks for offices, plants and warehouses, including manufacturing and warehouse WiFi
• Backup and disaster recovery sized to how long production can be down
• ERP and custom programming through the PDC Software Suite

Key takeaway: For a manufacturer, IT downtime is lost production. Our guide to the cost of IT downtime for manufacturers shows how to put a number on it.

The controls that stop most of these attacks are not exotic. Every Preferred Data plan, including the smallest, includes endpoint detection and response, 24/7 managed detection and response monitored by people, MFA, patching, email threat protection, security awareness training and backup we test by restoring it. We do not remove pieces of that baseline to lower a price.

Preferred Professional adds identity threat detection, a password manager, email encryption, and zero-trust VPN with DNS filtering. Preferred Complete adds recurring vulnerability scanning and an annual security assessment with penetration test coordination.

Preferred Data designs and supports segmented networks for offices, plants and warehouses through our network infrastructure services: separate segments for staff, guests, machines and cameras, and 24/7 network monitoring for managed clients. Our articles on network segmentation for manufacturers and OT security for factory networks go further.

• Inventory what is on the plant network before changing anything
• Separate machines and cameras from office and guest traffic
• Allow only the connections production actually needs, and log the rest
• Plan changes around your production schedule with your operations lead

Self-assessments did not go away. Under the CMMC program rule, Level 1 covers FCI and means meeting 15 basic safeguarding requirements with an annual self-assessment in the Supplier Performance Risk System (SPRS); Level 2 covers CUI and means meeting the 110 requirements of NIST SP 800-171. DFARS 252.204-7012, NIST SP 800-171 and SPRS score submissions all remain in effect.

Preferred Complete includes compliance readiness management for CMMC and NIST 800-171 (monitoring, documentation and evidence collection), and it is an add-on to Preferred Professional. We prepare you; certification comes from your own self-assessment or an accredited third-party assessor (C3PAO), never from your IT provider. Read our CMMC Phase 2 suspension briefing and Level 1 self-assessment guide.

Plans are priced per user per month. Servers, firewalls, switches, access points and storage are counted during a free quote and covered on the same agreement, so an equipment-heavy plant is priced on what we actually manage. Full plan details and a quote request are on the pricing page.

• The PDC Software Suite runs on your own server and is changed to fit how you work, with custom programming quoted before it starts. Choosing a system? See our ERP selection guide for manufacturers.
• Industry pages for furniture manufacturers and textile businesses, including fabric roll and cut tracking
• Buying another manufacturer? Our M&A technology due diligence puts the target's IT risks and fix costs in writing before closing, and our 90-day post-merger IT playbook covers what comes after.

• IT services in High Point, where our office is
• Greensboro and Winston-Salem, the rest of the Piedmont Triad
• Charlotte and Raleigh