How to protect designs, technical drawings and IP in manufacturing

Protection has to sit on the file, not on the network. With FileGrant, designs, CAD drawings and bills of materials are encrypted at creation with Lock&Go (CRYSTALS-Kyber, NIST FIPS 203), classified automatically, and bound by RBAC permissions that block download, printing and screen capture. Encryption stays active even when the file sits on a personal cloud account or a subcontractor's laptop. It matters because in 80% of manufacturing breaches the compromised data is internal, including designs and production plans (Verizon DBIR 2026), and intellectual property is the costliest data type at USD 178 per record (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025).

NIS2 is transposed in Italy by Legislative Decree 138/2024, in force since 16 October 2024. Most manufacturers are in scope as important entities, either above the size thresholds or as part of an essential entity's supply chain. Important entities must adopt the security measures in Annex 1 of ACN determination 379907/2025 by October 2026. ACN determination 127437 of 13 April 2026 added the obligation to list relevant NIS suppliers during the annual information update, between 15 April and 31 May. Operationally, NIS2 does not mandate a specific algorithm: it requires encryption proportionate to risk, access control, and traceability you can demonstrate. See compliance solutions.

Through revocable permissions rather than an attachment or a cloud link. In FileGrant, the supplier gets a named Reader-level access with an expiry date, download blocking and a watermark; the file stays encrypted on their device and access can be revoked at any point, even while the file is open. Every access lands in the audit trail with user, timestamp and IP. This addresses the sector's most common failure: a third party is involved in 61% of manufacturing breaches (Verizon DBIR 2026), and supplier compromise costs an average of USD 4.91 million (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025).

On two fronts. Prevention at the endpoint, with unauthorized application blocking, file deletion protection and anti-phishing (endpoint protection). And damage reduction at the data layer: if designs and documents are born encrypted, the exfiltration that precedes the ransom demand produces unreadable files, which removes the leverage behind double extortion. For context, ransomware appears in 61% of manufacturing breaches, malware in 75%, and vulnerability exploitation is the initial access vector in 38% of cases (Verizon DBIR 2026). The average industrial-sector breach costs USD 5.00 million (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025).

Blocking public tools without offering an alternative does not work: the work moves to channels with even less visibility. The effective combination is twofold. FileGrant blocks content scraping by public AI systems and classifies technical documents automatically; AIGrant provides an on-premise private AI that answers questions across manuals, specifications and documentation without data leaving the network, with segregation by department. This is a measured cost line: shadow AI adds an average of USD 670,000 to a breach, and in 40% of those cases intellectual property is compromised (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025).

No. FileGrant and RemoteGrant sit alongside the tools already in place and cover what those tools do not: persistent encryption that follows the file outside company systems, access revocation after sharing, screen capture blocking, AI scraping protection, and an audit trail usable in a NIS2 audit. PLM, ERP and SharePoint remain where the document lives. CyberGrant is what protects it once it leaves. On-premise deployment with zero-knowledge keys is available for organizations that cannot move project data to the cloud.