Food & Beverage Manufacturers Versus Cyber Threats

CybelAngel protects from food fraud, negative publicity, hefty privacy fines, and costly downtime.

When a global food & beverage manufacturing enterprise saw their competitor hit with a devastating supply chain attack, they knew it wouldn’t be long before they were targeted. Knowing their brand’s operations, customer food safety, and brand reputation was on the line, their CISO moved quickly.

Looking to explore a more proactive cybersecurity posture they consulted with CybelAngel, the Gartner-named “best of breed” provider of Digital Risk Protection Solutions (DRPS) and experts in identification and remediation of external cyber threats.

Here are the potential exposures and risks of inaction:

• Leaked packaging threatens to lead to food fraud and brand impact: Marketing and packaging-related firms unknowingly leave customer data and IP vulnerable. CybelAngel often finds packaging diagrams and marketing promotions sitting on cloud storage buckets inadvertently left open by marketing and design firms. This leaves the door open for adversaries, competitors, and copycats to access and replicate sensitive designs or gain a marketing advantage. In rare cases, stolen packaging design has led to food fraud and consumer hospitalization. The result would be a costly PR nightmare.
• Leaked blueprints by third-parties lead to downtime and espionage: Manufacturing process documentation, plant blueprints, HACCP documentation, and more are common findings, unknowingly exposed by third-party product suppliers. Threat actors can use details to target specific vulnerabilities in the buildings. These exposed documents have the potential to enable bad actors to interrupt operations, breach physical security, or spy on sensitive business operations and information.
• Leaked customer data results in a GDPR violation that impacts brand reputation, customer trust, incur fines and increases operational costs: When customer PII is leaked, privacy regulations require disclosure and notification of those impacted. This puts customer trust in jeopardy and affects brand reputation. When food and beverage companies end up in the news for such incidents, customer demand drops along with operational and profit margins. 

Of course, these risks have potential associated costs. This large food and beverage company calculated financial risk to the tune of:

• Copyright infringement and damages: ~$100M+
• Risk for downtime: ~$500K to $1M per day
• GDPR violation: $30M
• Protecting new investments: $2B

Take a bite out of cybercrime

With this analysis insight, the benefits of signing with CybelAngel were clear:

• CybelAngel provides this food and beverage customer with the most comprehensive, in-depth, ever-expanding scanning surface on the market. We scan 1.2 billion files every day on 4.3 million servers and databases. Cloud storage applications include Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform. We also cover DNS and the Deep and Dark Web.
• CybelAngel sends them only actionable alerts with zero false positives so they can focus on the production and distribution of safe, quality products. 100% of CybelAngel incident reports contain relevant alerts. The customer had no need to hire additional headcount or resources to sift through endless alert records.
• When leaks inevitably happen, CybelAngel proactively identifies and resolves them with lightning-fast detection well before they can be exploited. Data leaks are detected in less than 24 hours.

See beyond perimeters with CybelAngel

At CybelAngel we see beyond perimeters to protect businesses from the most critical external digital threats. Our unique machine learning platform and expert analysts provide a powerful solution to proactively protect enterprises from cyber threats. CybelAngel’s speed and accuracy help a company close the loop on digital risks long before attackers see an opportunity.