FEATURED EMPLOYEE
From Factory Floor to Global Strategy: Frank Cheng’s View
Role: |
Senior Director |
Division: |
V1 -Manufacturing & Pharmaceutical Department |
Location: |
New York Office |
Expertise: |
Project Management |
Experience: |
13 years at SYSCOM |
Hobbies: |
Hiking, Golfing, Snowboarding, Pickleball |
Frank Cheng doesn’t wait for things to go back to normal. When the pandemic shut down air travel and tied supply chains in knots, SYSCOM clients still needed their systems serviced—but that service is inherently in-person, and Frank couldn’t fly there. So he loaded everything he needed into two cars and hit the road.
“Normally, we just ship out the equipment and fly our teams there for an in-person implementation with the customer,” he says. “So we packed up about $1,000,000 in equipment into two cars and drove from New York down to Tennessee, up through Michigan, over to the Midwest, and back.”
Frank coordinated interstate travel guidelines and medical tests to ensure they followed policy in each state they visited, and to handle projects in Canada and South America, he tapped SYSCOM’s international team.
“We had someone in Canada who could manage the Canadian installs. Someone from South America who could step in closer to there,” he says. “It was a very fun puzzle to put together.”
Frank’s pragmatism and persistence has guided his work as Senior Director of SYSCOM’s manufacturing and pharmaceutical vertical. He leads IT and OT security projects for clients in industries undergoing dramatic operational change on their warehouse floors—and seeing increased cybersecurity threats because of it. For these companies, a single point of failure can be devastating.
Frank’s job is to see the puzzle pieces and fit them all together.
OT Security Is No Longer Optional
The manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors have seen a significant, if quiet, transformation over the past decade. Once largely air-gapped from the rest of IT, OT systems—the machines, sensors, and software that run production environments—are now fully networked.
“Operational technology used to be much more isolated,” Frank says. “It wasn’t necessarily connected to the internet, but a lot of it is now crossing paths with IT. Devices are more intelligent, more complex, and everything is connected.“
This blending of digital and physical systems has introduced a wave of new risks. Traditional IT tools weren’t designed for the legacy protocols, 24/7 schedules, and real-time demands of OT environments—and historically, OT environments were never considered to be a cybersecurity threat vector.
“In manufacturing, plants go beyond 9 to 5. They run 24/7,” Frank says. “Without visibility into your environment, you have no control.” And when something goes wrong, it doesn’t just affect one system. It can shut down production, impact safety, or even cause compliance violations.
In pharmaceutical operations, the stakes are even higher. The same principles that govern low-error drug production also apply to infrastructure. “They need strict standards,” Frank says. “When we implement systems for pharmaceutical clients, every phase has to be tested, verified, and qualified. That level of rigor is expected across the board.”
Treating OT environments not just as equipment, but as critical infrastructure, requires a new kind of security posture.
“Having visibility of all of your assets is key,” says Frank. “Being able to monitor it, being able to access it at all different times of the day, but also securing it, separating it from unauthorized access is very, very important.“
But in OT, visibility isn’t a one-time network scan. It’s the ability to monitor activity in real time, across a complex web of systems and protocols that weren’t designed to be connected in the first place. It means understanding what’s normal, detecting what isn’t, and responding with speed. Operating from a reactive standpoint isn’t enough.
“You need preventative security and proactive intelligence,” says Frank.
The rule now isn’t perimeter security or quarterly audits, but full situational awareness built for environments where a missed signal can halt production or trigger a safety event. Operations that fully integrate OT security as part of their cyber infrastructure, instead of a second thought, will be the most resilient.
It’s not just a hypothetical solution. It’s based on experience.
Frank Cheng
Senior Director, V1 -Manufacturing & Pharmaceutical Department
What We Offer, and Why It Works
Providing this kind of visibility is crucial to SYSCOM’s enhancement of IT and OT Security offerings. Both physical and digital security measures create a robust, holistic security posture. Two vendors make up the core of what powers our visibility engine: Verkada and Nozomi Networks.
“Verkada is physical security for the modern enterprise,” Frank says. “High-definition videos, AI-Powered Identity and Activity searches, Intelligent Access Controls. Things you’d think you’d need a team of people watching cameras in a control room to do. It can detect when someone isn’t wearing a hard hat, when someone is using a phone in a restricted area, or even when chemical emissions are present.”
In one use case, Frank supported a heavy metals refining company facing material loss across multiple facilities. He and his team are proposing a system, using Verkada’s camera systems for scale integrations, that would be able to identify when specific individuals consistently moved material in suspicious quantities. “That wasn’t feasible with traditional systems,” he says.
Nozomi, meanwhile, brings digital insight. “They’re one of the top two vendors in the field,” Frank says. “Their tools provide comprehensive asset visibility, 24/7 monitoring, and threat detection tailored to industrial environments.”
Together, these platforms create an OT security posture that’s not just preventative, but proactive. And for Frank, they also enable something deeper: trust.
Frank Leads from Experience
Frank started at SYSCOM as a customer support engineer. He’s since held roles as a project manager, solutions architect, technical account manager, and operations manager. That path became his toolkit.
Coming from engineering, he understands the technical challenges his clients are facing. To him, “having that technical experience and capability is important for being trusted by the engineers,” he says. “It’s not just a hypothetical solution. It’s based on experience.”
That hands-on credibility carries over into client conversations. When asked how he handles delivering good results versus delivering bad news to clients, he says it’s not that different.
“It’s one and the same, right?” he says. “The result is what you’re actually going to achieve. You have to make sure you’re being transparent and setting the right expectations.” The path may change as the client walks it, but he’s still delivering results.
“There are many ways to get to a solution. You have to expect hiccups, and it may not be the exact path you intended, but you can still achieve great results.”
Cultural Fluency Is a Competitive Advantage
SYSCOM’s workforce spans a wide range of nationalities, backgrounds, and cultures—something that has shaped how the team solves problems and supports clients around the world.
“We have a diverse set of people and cultures within our company,” Frank said. “That makes us a good match for our clients, especially those with global operations.“
It’s not just about translating between languages, it’s about translating between ways of thinking. With engineers and project managers who bring regional expertise and cultural context, SYSCOM is able to deliver solutions that meet technical and operational requirements—while also understanding local business norms and expectations.
“Those differences help us move things forward,” Frank said. “We can be non-traditional with the customer, and it’s appreciated—as long as you’re genuine and respectful about it.”
Finding the Way Forward
Innovation, one of SYSCOM’s core values, is about more than chasing trends for Frank. It’s about accepting change, and making sure your systems can, too.
“You have to be unafraid of change, you have to accept the process of change,” he says. “It’s about figuring out better ways of doing things, and not standing still.”
That mindset has guided Frank across roles, across regions, and even across the country during the pandemic. It guides his approach to the future of technology and business, too.
“You might have to do things differently than you planned,” says Frank. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t get where you’re going.“
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