Consilien provides IT services for semiconductor and electronics manufacturers, combining co-managed IT support with cybersecurity and compliance programs built for production environments where uptime, IP protection, and customer audit readiness aren't optional. We work alongside lean IT teams to close the gaps that OEM customers are now actively looking for.
Semiconductor & Electronics Manufacturing IT Services
Your tier-1 customers are auditing your cybersecurity. We help you pass. 25+ years managing IT for manufacturers | 2025 Channel Futures MSP 501
The Pressure Isn't Coming from Hackers First. It's Coming from Your Customers.
Something shifted in the last 18 months for semiconductor suppliers and electronics manufacturers. The cybersecurity conversation doesn't start with a breach anymore. It starts with a questionnaire.
NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, Applied Materials, and dozens of other tier-1 OEMs now require cybersecurity assessments from their supply chain before signing or renewing contracts. Kenanga Research flagged this in a July 2026 analysis, noting that cybersecurity has joined quality, cost, delivery, and manufacturing capability as a core supplier qualification criterion across the semiconductor value chain.
That's not theoretical risk. It's contract risk.
And the threat data backs up why OEMs are pushing this hard. IBM's 2026 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index put manufacturing at 27.7% of all cyberattacks tracked in 2025. Fifth consecutive year as the most targeted industry globally. 40% of those attacks went after intellectual property and trade secrets. For a semiconductor supplier holding customer design files, process specifications, and yield data, that number should keep you up at night.
It keeps us up at night. And we're the ones getting called to fix it.
Five Problems That Generic IT Providers Miss in Electronics Manufacturing
The lean IT problem.
A 150-person electronics manufacturer running 24/7 production typically has 1 to 2 IT staff. Maybe 3 if they're well-resourced. Those people manage ERP, MES, design tools, endpoint security, backup, user support, and production system uptime simultaneously. They're good at what they do. Stretched past the point where anything gets done proactively. When a 200-question cybersecurity assessment lands from an OEM customer, it lands on the same person troubleshooting a printer jam on the production floor.
That's not a staffing complaint. That's a structural problem.
OT/IT convergence that most MSPs won't touch.
Production networks aren't separate from business networks the way they should be. PLCs, HMIs, manufacturing execution systems, pick-and-place machines, and AOI inspection stations sit on the same flat network as email, ERP, and internet-facing systems in a surprising number of facilities we've assessed. A generic managed IT provider sees the business side. Everything behind the production firewall, if there even is one, gets ignored.
Eric Kong, our CEO, put it directly. "The manufacturing cyber incidents we see don't start on the plant floor. They start in IT and spread into OT because no one clearly defined where responsibility changed hands."
IP and trade secret exposure.
Semiconductor and electronics manufacturers hold some of the most valuable data in any industry. Design files. Process specifications. Customer BOMs. Test protocols. Yield data. In August 2025, three TSMC employees were arrested for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to 2-nanometer chip technology. That's the extreme end. The more common version is quieter. An engineer leaves and takes a thumb drive. A shared folder has no access controls. A former contractor's VPN credentials are still active 6 months after the engagement ended.
Nobody notices until someone notices.
Production uptime that can't tolerate IT disruptions.
Semiconductor plants can lose $300,000 or more per hour of unplanned downtime. Even for a mid-sized electronics assembler, an 8-hour outage caused by ransomware or a botched patch deployment can mean $50,000 to $400,000 in lost output, missed shipments, and expedited freight charges. And that's before the customer penalties. A manufacturer running just-in-time delivery for a tier-1 OEM doesn't get a grace period after a missed shipment. They get a corrective action request.
A compliance landscape that won't stop expanding.
Three years ago, electronics manufacturers worried about ISO 9001 and maybe ITAR if they touched defense work. Now the list keeps growing. NIST released a CSF 2.0 Semiconductor Manufacturing Community Profile in 2025, built in partnership with SEMI's Semiconductor Manufacturing Cybersecurity Consortium. SEMI E187 sets cybersecurity baselines for fab equipment. ISO 27001 is becoming a table-minimum for supplier qualification. CMMC applies to anyone in the defense supply chain. Each framework has different controls, different documentation, and different audit expectations. Your 2-person IT team wasn't hired to run a compliance program across 4 frameworks at the same time.
Our Clients' Success
What IT Support Actually Looks Like for a Semiconductor Supplier
What does IT support actually look like for a company making PCBs for a defense prime? Or a 200-person fab equipment supplier whose biggest customer just sent over a security self-assessment form? It doesn't look like what most MSPs sell.
What Are IT Services for Semiconductor and Electronics Manufacturers?
IT services for semiconductor and electronics manufacturers are managed or co-managed technology support programs designed for production-driven environments where uptime, IP protection, and regulatory compliance are business-critical. These services typically include production network management, cybersecurity, endpoint protection across mixed OT/IT environments, and strategic IT planning through vCIO or vCISO advisory. Compliance readiness across frameworks like ISO 27001, NIST CSF, ITAR, and CMMC runs as a separate engagement alongside the IT program.
The Compliance Stack Keeps Getting Taller
Not every framework applies to every electronics manufacturer. But more of them apply than companies realize.
We don't handle all of these ourselves in every case. For some frameworks, we work alongside your compliance team or external assessors to build the technical controls, produce the documentation, and maintain the evidence that auditors need. What we don't do is tell you you're "compliant" when you aren't. That shortcut is the fastest way to fail a real audit.
The Numbers Behind the Risk
27.7% of all cyberattacks
in 2025 targeted manufacturing. The most attacked industry for the fifth consecutive year. (IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, 2026)
$300,000+ per hour
That's unplanned downtime at a semiconductor manufacturing facility, before missed shipments and customer penalties. Mid-sized electronics assemblers run $22,000 to $50,000 per hour.
40% of manufacturing cyberattacks
in 2025 involved data theft targeting intellectual property and trade secrets. Design files, process specifications, customer data. (IBM X-Force, 2026)
25+ years
We've been doing this for manufacturers since 2001. We've worked through every version of these compliance requirements, and we've seen what happens when companies try to bolt security on after a customer assessment comes back with findings.
How It Starts
So here's how it actually works when a semiconductor supplier or electronics manufacturer calls us. No mystery to it.
Discovery session. 20 to 30 minutes. We learn about your production environment, your current IT setup, and what's driving the conversation. Sometimes it's a customer assessment that came back with findings. Sometimes it's a near-miss security incident. Sometimes the IT person just needs backup and finally has budget approval to get it. We figure out where you are.
Technology assessment. 2 to 4 hours on-site. We look at your actual environment. Network architecture, production systems, security tools, backup configuration, documentation. We're checking what's in place, what's misconfigured, and what's missing. We'll tell you what we find, including the parts that don't lead to a sale.
Strategy session and solution design. Based on the assessment, we present findings and a prioritized remediation roadmap. What needs to happen first. What can wait. What it costs and what happens if you skip it. Clear picture before any contracts get signed.
Co-managed integration. We don't replace your IT person. We work alongside them. We take over monitoring, security management, compliance documentation, and the escalation path. They stay focused on production systems and user support. Clear lanes. Shared responsibility. That's how co-managed IT is supposed to work.
Ongoing management and quarterly reviews. Your environment changes. Customers change their requirements. New compliance frameworks show up. We adjust. Quarterly business reviews with your leadership keep IT aligned with where the business is headed.
Concerns We Hear
"We already have an IT person."
Good. We don't want to replace them. Co-managed means your person stays, keeps doing what they're good at, and gets a team behind them for security, compliance, monitoring, and escalation. The alternative is burning out your best technical person until they leave. Then you're starting from scratch with a contractor who doesn't know your environment.
"We've been fine without this."
Maybe. But "fine" usually means nothing bad has happened yet. IBM's data shows manufacturing has been the #1 cyberattack target for 5 years running. And customer assessment questionnaires are a newer pressure. Three years ago they barely existed for mid-tier suppliers. Now they're showing up quarterly. The question isn't whether you've been fine. It's whether your customers will still call you fine when they audit your environment next quarter.
"This seems expensive."
Compared to what? Ransomware recovery at a mid-sized manufacturer runs $150K to $500K in forensics, lost production, and remediation. Losing an OEM contract because you failed a cybersecurity assessment costs more than that in annual revenue. We aren't cheap. The companies that hire us have done the math.
"Can't we just buy some tools and handle it internally?"
We've walked into environments with $80K worth of security products that nobody was monitoring, updating, or responding to alerts from. The tools were running. Nobody was watching. A managed security program isn't the software. It's the people and process around the software. Without that, you've got expensive shelfware and a false sense of protection.
Concerns We Hear
"We already have an IT person."
Good. We don't want to replace them. Co-managed means your person stays, keeps doing what they're good at, and gets a team behind them for security, compliance, monitoring, and escalation. The alternative is burning out your best technical person until they leave. Then you're starting from scratch with a contractor who doesn't know your environment.
"We've been fine without this."
Maybe. But "fine" usually means nothing bad has happened yet. IBM's data shows manufacturing has been the #1 cyberattack target for 5 years running. And customer assessment questionnaires are a newer pressure. Three years ago they barely existed for mid-tier suppliers. Now they're showing up quarterly. The question isn't whether you've been fine. It's whether your customers will still call you fine when they audit your environment next quarter.
"This seems expensive."
Compared to what? Ransomware recovery at a mid-sized manufacturer runs $150K to $500K in forensics, lost production, and remediation. Losing an OEM contract because you failed a cybersecurity assessment costs more than that in annual revenue. We aren't cheap. The companies that hire us have done the math.
"Can't we just buy some tools and handle it internally?"
We've walked into environments with $80K worth of security products that nobody was monitoring, updating, or responding to alerts from. The tools were running. Nobody was watching. A managed security program isn't the software. It's the people and process around the software. Without that, you've got expensive shelfware and a false sense of protection.
Talk to a Consilien Manufacturing IT Expert
Schedule a 20-minute discovery session. No pitch deck. No pressure. An honest conversation about where you are and what your customers are going to require.
Your Next Customer Audit Is Coming
Every quarter that passes without a structured cybersecurity program is another quarter where a customer assessment could come back with findings you can't remediate in time. For semiconductor and electronics manufacturers, the cost of that isn't abstract. It's a contract you don't win. A renewal that goes to a competitor whose IT environment looked better on paper.
We've been doing this for manufacturers since 2001. We know what the assessments look for. We know what auditors flag. And we know how to build an IT and security environment that holds up under scrutiny without your team scrambling to produce evidence that doesn't exist.
Not ready for a conversation yet? Read more about our manufacturing cybersecurity solutions, or see how we approach compliance readiness across NIST, ISO 27001, ITAR, and CMMC.
Do you replace our internal IT person?
No. Co-managed means we work alongside your existing IT staff. Security, compliance, monitoring, escalation, that's us. Production systems, user support, day-to-day operations, that stays with your team. The internal IT people we work with prefer this arrangement. Takes the weight of security management off their plate without threatening their role.