KNIPPING Kunststofftechnik supplies the automotive industry from six locations across two continents. Their production floor runs machines dating back to 1990 alongside modern manufacturing equipment. These machines perform reliably, cannot be replaced economically, and run on operating systems that have not received security updates for years.

The question that kept Markus Frenzel, Head of IT Department at KNIPPING, preoccupied for a long time: how do you securely connect machines from the 90s to a modern IT infrastructure; without retrofitting, without downtime, without introducing new risks?

The company’s historically grown, tightly interlocked IT/OT environment made it difficult to cleanly separate network zones. Its machinery fleet, built on long investment cycles, is aging in hardware and software and can rarely be updated, while a rapidly changing production environment demands increasing connectivity, and regulatory requirements such as NIS2 and mandatory certifications like TISAX increased the pressure on IT/OT security at the same time.

“Understandably, the plant manager wants the quick solution for connecting machines – but in IT, we know there’s a Windows XP instance running in the background with an outdated SMBv1 protocol, and we need to address security first.”

Markus Frenzel, Head of IT Department at KNIPPING

When TISAX based on VDA ISA 6 – the mandatory information security standard in the automotive sector – first defined OT security as an explicit audit criterion, KNIPPING acted early: the TISAX certification had to be renewed, and the OT infrastructure had to be demonstrably secured.

edge.SHIELDOR, TRIOVEGA’s software solution, secures existing equipment without touching it. Data transfer, protocol conversion (e.g., SMBv1 to SMBv3), and access control all run through edge.SHIELDOR, keeping the OT environment isolated yet accessible.

A proof of concept (PoC) began at the Leingarten plant, integrating three core functions of edge.SHIELDOR: secure process data transfer from the machine to a server on the IT side via the OPC UA protocol; file synchronization between IT and OT with protocol conversion from the insecure SMBv1 to the current SMBv3; and, in a later phase, secure screen transfer of the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) via VNC (Virtual Network Computing) for remote browser-based access.

During a two-day on-site onboarding workshop, edge.SHIELDOR was connected to an injection molding machine and a milling machine. edge.SHIELDOR was now running, placing itself like a protective dome over the legacy machines.

The successful proof of concept marks the beginning of a long-term partnership between KNIPPING and TRIOVEGA. Today, around 25 edge.SHIELDOR units are running in productive operation at the Leingarten plant; the next step is to scale to 40 to 50 units. Mexico is next on the rollout agenda.

TISAX based on VDA ISA 6, IEC 62443, and NIS2 supply chain requirements all find their technical answer in the edge.SHIELDOR architecture. And because TRIOVEGA itself holds TISAX and IEC 62443 certifications, this significantly accelerated the vendor approval process at KNIPPING.

Offline was safe, connected was risky. Today, these are no longer contradictions.

Benefits at a glance

Secure connectivity for legacy machines, no retrofitting, no downtime

Protocol conversion from SMBv1 to SMBv3 for secure, bidirectional file exchange between OT and IT

Full PLC integration via process data transfer and remote access

TISAX compliance that holds up under audit

Centralized OT security management for a small IT team across all locations, with no additional overhead