Security breaches in the Food and Beverage industry can impact production in unique ways. Attacks can occur on key operational systems such as refrigeration; materials might be misdirected; recipes may be tampered with or stolen, leading beyond product and financial losses to product quality and safety issues. A specific cybersecurity strategy addressing these specialized risks is required.
Build a Safer Infrastructure – Then Monitor Continuously
Shield legacy operations using IDCs and 24/7 threat detection
Food and Beverage companies often have a legacy production system that makes deploying the latest cybersecurity protections difficult.
The good news: secure information convergence with an aging infrastructure is possible. Rockwell Automation can virtualize legacy systems into an Industrial Data Center (IDC), which delivers the benefits of connected operations along with lowered cybersecurity risk. Even outdated Operational Support Systems (OSS), multiple distributed computers with their own operating systems and other legacy infrastructure can be converged into an IDC.
Then strong cybersecurity support technologies and processes, such as 24/7 threat detection and frequent asset inventory audits – daily, hourly or even real time – can be deployed to help secure operations from cyber incidents and to preserve product quality and safety.
A Secure Digital Transformation Safely Delivers New Agility
How average network response time was reduced by 90%
Food and Beverage manufacturing companies have a unique vulnerability: cyberattacks can become a public health risk.
With the onslaught of COVID-19, production operations were upended in most organizations. But the pandemic also changed shopping habits and squeezed supply chains. The rate of digital transformation has gained steam as Food and Beverage manufacturers find ways to gain back lost ground, adding agility to better meet these – and future – challenges.
With digital transformation comes the need for modern, enhanced cybersecurity. As one multinational food manufacturer discovered, these efforts are no longer two separate initiatives, but must be implemented holistically. Greater connectivity requires an approach that helps protect production operations and ensures that breach attempts are quickly identified and blocked, or limited from spreading if successful.
After a Destructive Malware Attack, Things Had to Change
Modernizing infrastructure across 80 sites, worldwide
A well-known global snack food company endured a destructive malware attack that disrupted their networks and brought production to a halt. It was clear that all of their sites—80 globally—needed to be modernized and secured. Earlier attempts had failed, given the complexity and heterogeneity of their networks.
Rockwell Automation was brought in to help create a global inventory of the company’s digital assets, to enhance incident response capabilities and overall cybersecurity.
Collaborating with the company’s global director of engineering, networks were assessed, identifying all installed base assets and confirming compatibility between security systems and existing enterprise networks and applications. Rockwell Automation then developed a plan to mitigate network conflicts and implemented 24/7 remote threat monitoring and administration.
Today, the company is operating with reduced cybersecurity risk, higher agility and decreased downtime.
