Cybersecurity plays a vital role in protecting poultry processing plants and production facilities against malicious data breaches.
A growing number of poultry companies have invested in automation, artificial intelligence and other technologies to solve labor challenges and improve efficiency. At the same time, several recent data breaches and cyberattacks, including one at JBS in June 2021 that temporarily idled operations at meat processing plants in the U.S., Canada and Australia, have highlighted the need for tougher cybersecurity protocols in the poultry industry.
“How do we keep our facilities protected with all of these dangerous things happening?” Jeremy Dodson, chief information security officer, NextLink Labs, said during Industrial Cybersecurity: Is Your Facility Protected? “What do we do to protect that?”
A holistic view at protecting poultry data
Previously, most companies thought of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) as separate entities. While OT focused on the hardware and software used to control physical devices, equipment and buildings from a safety perspective, IT refers primarily to e-mail and other computer technologies.
This is changing, as the two worlds become increasingly intertwined.
“The key goal is understanding that there’s a difference and then bringing these two conversations together to solve that problem,” explained Dodson.
Coming together to create smart poultry equipment
Within a connected environment, IT’s concerns about data security are applied to an OT environment. The only way to do this properly is to bring together the right people to facilitate training for both sides so that all concerns are addressed.
For example, from an IT perspective, computers, phones and other mobile devices are replaced frequently. However, largest pieces of equipment used in poultry processing plants, production facilities and other OT environments could last for 20 years.
“As we start investing in new concepts,” like the cloud, robots, automation and new technologies, “we have all this information about what the equipment’s doing, how it’s operating, what condition it’s in and we get to see that now in a different way than just being physically there,” Dodson noted.
