Manufacturing

Improving network performance and operational efficiency

Milwaukee Electronics was experiencing several key networking and security challenges. Supply chain issues were making it difficult to acquire new network infrastructure, and the company’s existing mesh network was suffering from high latency. Network outages that sometimes lasted for days were proving to be disruptive and extremely costly in terms of lost productivity and revenue.

The company also urgently needed a new security architecture to meet evolving customer expectations and satisfy regulatory mandates. As a highly respected provider of electronics manufacturing services for close to six decades, Milwaukee Electronics is deeply committed to helping its customers succeed and ensuring the safety of their data and intellectual property.

With cyber threats continuing to grow in number and level of sophistication, companies in every industry increasingly require their manufacturing partners to demonstrate that they have the highest levels of security protection in place and are compliant with the latest cybersecurity regulations. On the subject of cybersecurity, they are better informed than ever before.

"They’re doing their security due diligence before they even come to us, making sure that we’ve got everything buttoned up," said Kyle Frank, Security and Compliance Manager at Milwaukee Electronics.

Addressing these concerns is understandably a top priority for Milwaukee Electronics. However, its network was being bombarded every day with hundreds of cybersecurity threats, and its existing security solution lacked the sophisticated tools the IT team needed to detect, manage, and block them proactively.

Seamless security integration

Milwaukee Electronics chose the Cisco Secure Connect solution to improve network performance, decrease latency, reduce outages, and provide a unified, always-on security structure across all of the company’s manufacturing and office locations. With a hybrid workforce, the company needs to ensure employees enjoy the same security protections and have access to the applications they need when they need them.

Deploying the Cisco Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution across company sites was easy and fast, and the IT team has seen a significant reduction of the time and effort required to manage network and security processes. With the previous technology stack, staff had to use multiple interfaces to manage the various networking and security systems.

With the complete, converged solution Secure Connect provides, a single dashboard replaces all of these interfaces, radically simplifying configuration, maintenance, and troubleshooting activities across the network. The boost in efficiency has freed up IT staff to work on other high-priority IT initiatives.

The company is already reaping the benefits of a unified SASE solution. It has dramatically reduced costly network outages, enhanced security across all of its sites, and ensured compliance.

"Implementing the Cisco solution lets me maximize my IT team’s resources; it positions the business for scalable growth, and it lets us focus on flexing to the diverse needs of our customers," said Justin Moulton, Vice President of Operations and Technology at Milwaukee Electronics.

With Secure Connect deployed, Milwaukee Electronics has made network and security management easy through a single console that provides greater visibility and control for ongoing monitoring and optimization. Should an issue occur, the IT team has everything it needs to respond quickly before it can cause problems. Customer data and corporate resources are secured compliantly, while employees working in the office or remotely remain protected.