Mars, Inc. is a privately held, family-owned global manufacturer operating in Petcare, Snacking, and Food & Nutrition. Founded in 1911, the company runs operations across more than 80 countries with over 140,000 associates. That footprint means defending a sprawling attack surface: industrial control systems in manufacturing plants, global supply chain logistics, massive e-commerce and retail payment systems, and the corporate networks tying it all together.
The threat model here is broad. A company producing everything from ROYAL CANIN to SNICKERS to BEN'S ORIGINAL faces risks spanning OT/ICS environments on factory floors, consumer data protection across dozens of markets, and brand-impersonation attacks at global scale. The security organization must cover enterprise IT, operational technology, cloud infrastructure, and third-party risk across a complex vendor ecosystem. Mars operates under five guiding principles - Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency, and Freedom - and its Sustainable in a Generation Plan adds sustainability-related compliance and reporting requirements that intersect with data governance.
Being privately held and family-owned means long-horizon thinking without quarterly earnings pressure. That can translate to sustained investment in security tooling, talent, and program maturity. The scope of work here isn't theoretical: it's protecting critical infrastructure across food production, pet nutrition, and confectionery at genuine industrial scale, in 80-plus regulatory jurisdictions, with a workforce that dwarfs most tech companies.