Cybersecurity in Food Safety: Why It Matters
Supermarkets in France and Belgium were recently hit by cyberattacks on their refrigeration systems. Independent temperature monitoring tells you in time to act, whatever the cause.
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Who keeps an eye on your refrigeration system?
In recent weeks, supermarkets in France, and since 1 November also in Belgium and other European countries, were hit by cyberattacks on their refrigeration systems. The attacks did not target stock or payment systems, but the cooling itself. They raise a question that matters to every store and kitchen, whether the cause is a cyberattack, a technical failure or a door left open: who keeps an eye on your refrigeration system?
What happened?
The attackers gained access to the electronic controllers that run the refrigeration installations. These controllers were directly reachable over the internet. Once inside, the attackers switched refrigerated cabinets into defrost mode. The temperature in the cabinets rose, while the installation itself was simply doing what it had been told to do.
Why can an attack like this go unnoticed?
In many stores and kitchens, the refrigeration controller has two jobs: it regulates the cooling and it reports the temperature. That works well as long as the controller can be trusted. But when it has been manipulated, the system that should warn you is the one that is compromised. A cabinet can warm up for hours without anyone receiving an alarm. The same dependency plays a role in an ordinary technical failure: when cooling, registration and alarms share the same controller, software or connection, one incident can hit all of them at once.
For food safety, that is a real risk. Products may have to be discarded, and the temperature registration that HACCP requires no longer reflects reality.
What does independent temperature monitoring mean?
Independent monitoring means that temperature is measured by a separate system, with its own sensors and its own data path, that has no control over the refrigeration installation.
Rmoni works with their own independent sensors. They measure temperature with their own probe and communicate with their own gateway via a separate Zigbee network. The monitoring cannot switch a refrigeration system on or off, cannot start a defrost cycle and cannot change its settings. The data is available directly in RmoniWeb.
Because the measurement does not depend on the refrigeration controller, it still detects the temperature rise when that controller has been manipulated. An alarm then follows according to the alarm profiles you have set up, by email, SMS or voice call.
To be clear: independent monitoring does not prevent a cyberattack. What it does is make sure you know about a temperature deviation in time to act, whatever the cause.
How does the monitoring itself work?
- Communication between sensor and gateway runs via a Zigbee network
- If a sensor or gateway fails or communication is disrupted, you receive a communication-loss alarm, provided that system alarms are set up
- Alarms and settings can only be changed by logged-in users with the right permissions. Every change is logged.
- The platform supports two-factor authentication
An alarm only works if someone acts on it
Good monitoring is as much about agreements as about technology. Who receives an alarm at night? Who takes over during holidays? And what can staff do on the spot, such as calling a technician or moving products? Make these arrangements explicit, keep alarm recipients up to date and test the whole chain regularly, from sensor to the person who picks up the phone.
The recorded temperature data then helps you look back at what happened, supporting your investigation of an incident and the assessment of products that may have been affected.
What can you do today?
- Close the “door” to your refrigeration system. Ask your refrigeration supplier to check that controllers can’t be reached directly over the internet. Remote maintenance should only run through a secured connection, with your own passwords instead of default ones.
- Know who has access. Make a list of every connected device in your store or kitchen and every supplier that can log in remotely. Ask your supplier to keep the controller software up to date as part of the maintenance contract.
- Prepare your team. Agree what staff do when a cabinet warms up: who to call, where products can go, and how you decide whether they’re still safe.
- Keep an additional eye on temperature. Use independent monitoring that doesn’t depend on the refrigeration controller and test the whole alarm chain regularly, including nights and holidays.
Conclusion
A refrigeration system is built to cool, not to watch over itself. Independent temperature monitoring adds a second line that keeps working when the installation’s own monitoring can no longer be trusted. For food retailers and food service operators, that means a problem is noticed in time to protect products and customers.