Crowley Fabricating & Machining Company

Crowley

“The grant that AM&T initiated with AIM has made it possible to achieve our customers’ requirements as a supplier and continue to do business with them. This service is very important in helping small companies stay competitive and to grow. Our enemies are going after the small companies because they know most of them cannot afford to invest the time or money to keep up with cyber security. I have shared with other Primes what we have invested in and they are very excited to hear what we have accomplished. This has certainly opened up more opportunities for our company.”

— Thomas M. Crowley, President

RESULTS

The project resulted in:

  • Increased and retained sales of $1 to 2 Million Dollars
  • Increased and retained jobs retain and add about 5 to 6 jobs.
  • Capital Investment of $75,000.00 in updated cyber security training and equipment.

COMPANY:

Crowley Fabricating & Machining Co., Inc.is located in Endicott NY with two facilities, one providing sheet metal contract work and the other providing Machining and support ops. Recent contract awards have lead Crowley Fabricating &Machining Co., Inc. in the direction to assess their Cybersecurity.

SITUATION:

As a potential Department of Defense contractor, Crowley needed to ensure its systems complied with the new NIST Special Publication 800-171 requirement: Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Information Systems and Organizations. Lacking a full-time information technology staff, Crowley needed extra support to address the government regulation, especially given the requirement’s tight timeframe. The company called on the Alliance for Manufacturing Technology (AM&T) and a third-party partner (AIM) to help interpret the guidelines, assess vulnerabilities, and execute improvements before the strict compliance deadline.

Also, AM&T was able to secure a DOD Cybersecurity grant to offset Crowley’s cost of the program.

SOLUTION:

In May, Crowley contracted AM&T to support its efforts in becoming cybersecurity compliant. AM&T utilized our sister MEP center – AIM, to guide Crowley through the complex regulations and requirements associated with becoming compliant to DFARS in accordance with NIST 800-171 DoD cybersecurity. By September 2019, Crowley implemented the necessary changes to ensure compliance with the cybersecurity standard, securing their government contracts and retaining sales and jobs. The improvements also led to cost savings for the company. Along with this, our customer who is a Prime Contractor for the Department of Defense, has accepted our letter from AIM and we are exempt from being audited for 1 year by our customer. Our customer said that approximately 150 suppliers on this project must all have done what we had done with AIM.