Air Knives and Manifolds

PFW: Generally speaking, why would a food company be targeted for a cyberattack?

ALGEIER: I think different actors have different motives. Why would they attack an oil and gas company or a healthcare company? Some cybercriminals are looking for money, and some nation/state actors are looking for intellectual property. Of course, there’s always the possibility that critical infrastructure can be targeted by a nation/state for disruption.

I think the food and agriculture industry is like most other critical infrastructure sectors, which is you have larger enterprises with more resources that are generally better able to defend themselves than the smaller enterprises with fewer resources. And one of the goals that we have within our Food and Ag-ISAC is to help increase the security level of those smaller enterprises, so we can drive secure practices back to them and they can elevate their defenses and improve their mitigation and incident response.

High Efficiency

PFW: Does each Food and Ag-ISAC company monitor its cybersecurity using its own in-house equipment, or is there some level of standardization of tools to make it easier for members to communicate with each other?

ALGEIER: Not everyone is using the same equipment and not everyone uses equipment in the same way. They have their own risk management plans, they deploy tools, technologies, and response plans. They make their own security investments based on what they think is right for their company.

Ionizing Rinsing Systems

We do provide a toolset they can plug into and we have our intelligence management platform they can plug their security tools into so they can get the indicators that we’re seeing and uploading that other member companies are seeing. And then through this platform, companies will be able to pull those indicators from the platform into their security tools. So, there is a common technology that we all leverage through the IT-ISAC for indicator sharing. But once you get into the enterprises, the companies make their own investments on security and technology tools they deploy internally.

PFW: Are there plans to have a Food and Ag-ISAC annual meeting for member companies to check in with each other in person?

ALGEIER: We’re working towards annual meetings, but we currently have virtual meetings every other week where the analysts from the member companies come together to talk about what new threats they’re seeing, what they’re monitoring, what potential vulnerabilities have announced, how that’s impacting them, and how they’re mitigating them. We also have other ways our members communicate between meetings like secure chat listservs.

PFW: Was there anything you wanted to add or something we missed?

ALGEIER: We’re really excited about the great feedback we’ve received and the support we have from the industry, our policymakers, transportation partners, and the food and agriculture industry, who really are supportive of the Food and Ag-ISAC mission and our common desire to defend this critical infrastructure. We look forward to working together to protect each other and the industry as a whole. I think it’s an exciting time for the industry, and it’s great they now have an industry-led forum to help manage risk.