Major French supermarket chains said they were hit by a cyberattack that caused their refrigerators to shoot up in temperature in hundreds of stores, forcing spoiled food to be thrown away and raising concerns about food security.
Industrial equipment such as refrigeration units, long isolated from the internet, are now connected via sensors or remote monitoring systems, Antoine Hautin of cybersecurity consultancy Almond told AFP.
So like, maybe not have the sensors and remote monitoring? Why does this even need to be a thing? Grocery stores got along fine with out remote monitoring for a long time. I dunno, I not a refrigeratorologist.
I think remote monitoring could be useful. E.g. “Fridge X in store Y has failed, we can book an engineer”. However even then: it should be secure within the network and not accessible outside it. And the other issue is monitoring is fine, but why on earth do you need remote access to defrost a unit? That is just asking for trouble.
I bet cost cutting is at the centre of this - cheaper to have one person able to “manage” problems off site than having people available local to all the stores. But when you save money like this, you need to spend money to ensure it’s secure. And often they don’t because all these companies cut all costs all the time to boost share prices. And that includes competent people in IT and networking. Probably outsourced to some conglomerate that doesn’t give a fuck.
Agreed it could be useful, but counterpoint, I used to work in a local only grocery store back in the 90s. We had temp gauges hanging from the evaporator units blowing in the cooler, and temp gauges in the customer facing side as well. We’d look at them, and if they’re out of range, we’d call the maintenance company. I mean, stores are staffed by people, even downsizing, someone has to go into the walk in fridges and freezers to put stock away from shipments and restock customer facing areas. I dunno, seems like a solution that doesn’t have a problem.
Or even better, if you have remote monitoring don’t give it remote control abilities. This is something that should be physical/on-fridge only. The monitoring should just be there so you can track the temperature for compliance and saftey
So like, maybe not have the sensors and remote monitoring? Why does this even need to be a thing? Grocery stores got along fine with out remote monitoring for a long time. I dunno, I not a refrigeratorologist.
I think remote monitoring could be useful. E.g. “Fridge X in store Y has failed, we can book an engineer”. However even then: it should be secure within the network and not accessible outside it. And the other issue is monitoring is fine, but why on earth do you need remote access to defrost a unit? That is just asking for trouble.
I bet cost cutting is at the centre of this - cheaper to have one person able to “manage” problems off site than having people available local to all the stores. But when you save money like this, you need to spend money to ensure it’s secure. And often they don’t because all these companies cut all costs all the time to boost share prices. And that includes competent people in IT and networking. Probably outsourced to some conglomerate that doesn’t give a fuck.
Agreed it could be useful, but counterpoint, I used to work in a local only grocery store back in the 90s. We had temp gauges hanging from the evaporator units blowing in the cooler, and temp gauges in the customer facing side as well. We’d look at them, and if they’re out of range, we’d call the maintenance company. I mean, stores are staffed by people, even downsizing, someone has to go into the walk in fridges and freezers to put stock away from shipments and restock customer facing areas. I dunno, seems like a solution that doesn’t have a problem.
Or even better, if you have remote monitoring don’t give it remote control abilities. This is something that should be physical/on-fridge only. The monitoring should just be there so you can track the temperature for compliance and saftey