RESOURCES
The material an in-house IT department would build for you
A big manufacturer has an IT department. That department writes the acceptable use policy, prints the posters, runs the training, fills in the customer questionnaire, and gets the plant ready when an auditor books a visit.
Most plants don't have one. The job still lands on someone: usually the maintenance lead, the controller, or the engineer who happened to know how the VPN worked in 2016.
This is the material an in-house IT department would build for you, if you had one. Most plants don't. So we built it.
Five areas. Take what's useful. The catalogue is open to everyone and a good part of the shelf downloads on a free account.
The six areas
Resource library → /resources/library/ Policies, posters, toolbox talks, checklists, quick-reference cards, guidebooks, presentations, webinars and videos. Editable, unbranded where it matters, written for a plant with three shifts and contractors on site, not for a downtown office. Sixteen IT policies in one adoptable pack, plus assets no generic IT provider carries: access control for the HMI screens on the line, legacy-machine risk registers, shift-handover escalation cards.
Training → /resources/training/ Security awareness training and phishing simulation built for a workforce that already understands safety training as normal, recurring and non-punitive. Short modules. Role-based tracks for plant floor, maintenance, office and leadership. Completion records you can print and hand over.
NIST readiness → /resources/nist-readiness/ A customer sent you a questionnaire naming a framework you've never read. This is the plain-language explanation, plus a seven-stage readiness path: scope, assess, plan, fix, evidence, dry run, re-assess. We prepare you. We do not issue certificates.
Briefings → /resources/briefings/ Thirty minutes, third Tuesday of the month, 7:30 in the morning. Twenty minutes on one thing that matters in a plant, ten minutes on your questions, and then we let you go. Online, recorded, and up within 48 hours. No product pitch, no vendor slides, and no follow-up sales call unless you ask for one. Open to anyone: you do not need an account and you do not need to be a member.
Events → /resources/events/ Roundtables, plant floor briefings, readiness workshops and regional sessions across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Operator to operator. Nobody pitching.
News → /resources/news/ Written for manufacturers, not for IT press. No fear-mongering, no vendor press releases. Every item ends with what to actually do. Plus the member newsletter: one email a month, under four minutes to read.
Why some of it asks you to sign in
The whole catalogue is open. Every item is listed with its description, so you can see exactly what is here before you decide anything.
What separates the tiers is cost to us, not a marketing decision. A file that already exists costs us nothing to hand one more person, so it is free. An hour of an advisor's time, a training seat, or a chair in a room is a real cost, and that is what membership covers.
Three tiers, applied to every item on every page:
| Tier | What it means |
|---|---|
| Community | A free account. A selection of the generic shelf, the briefing, the newsletter, the self-serve tools, and the full catalogue. |
| Partner Access | The same free account with the complete generic shelf and a standing briefing invitation, for members of a listed partner organization. Not a membership. |
| Member | The IT service. Everything above, plus the versions written for your plant, advisor time, training seats and roundtable seats. |
| Member of Both | You're a SafeIT member and a member of one of the associations on our partner organizations list. Adds enhanced Cork coverage, a priority SLA meaning a faster response target, a free annual re-assessment, reserved seats and a recognition badge. |
What membership includes
- Advisors on call. Someone who works on plants, reachable without a quote attached. No cap, no meter.
- The library, written for your plant. Sixteen IT policies, the poster set, toolbox talks, checklists and templates, matched to your sites and your systems and refreshed at review.
- Training and phishing simulation. Every user, scheduled, with a completion record you can hand to an auditor.
- Readiness work. Gap assessment against NIST or ISO 27001, a roadmap, and an evidence pack.
- Roundtable and event seats. Capped at roughly 12 people. Chatham House rule. Nothing recorded.
- Procurement pricing through Pax8. Member rates on the Microsoft 365 and Azure licensing you already buy.
- Cork coverage, active once onboarding brings your environment up to Cork's baseline, and waived onboarding fees.
And separately, free to anyone: a full IT and security assessment, on site or remote. You keep the report whether or not you ever become a member. Take it to your current provider, your owner, your insurer or the customer who sent the questionnaire.
Full tier-by-tier detail is on Member benefits. The reasoning behind running an IT provider like an association is on the membership model.
Where to start
If a customer just sent you a questionnaire → start at NIST readiness, then book the free assessment.
If you have no written IT policies at all → the policy pack is the fastest win on this site. Sixteen documents, adopt them in an afternoon.
If your team keeps clicking things → run a free baseline phishing test.
If you just want to see how other plants handle this → Events and Roundtables.
If you don't know where the gaps are → book the free assessment. It is the honest answer to "where do I even start."
What this means for your plant
What this means for your plant The whole catalogue is open, the briefing is open to anyone, and a good part of the shelf downloads on a free account. Membership is what turns a generic template into one that describes your plant. The free assessment is open to anyone, and the report is yours either way.
Become a member → /membership/join/
Related
- Resource library · Training · NIST readiness · Briefings · Events · News
- Become a member: the path, and the first conversation
- Book a free assessment
- What membership includes · The membership model · Membership
- Roundtables · Cork coverage
- Services, the seven services membership covers
- Partner organizations