RAD has outlined how its Smart Business IoT solution helps food retailers stop a cyberattack on refrigeration controls from turning into mass food spoilage. The solution adds its own wireless sensors and IoT gateway, which alert staff the moment cold-storage conditions drift, even when the refrigeration system’s own alarms have been manipulated.
On the night of October 11, attackers gained remote access to refrigeration controllers in hundreds of French stores. According to Le Monde, they stretched defrost cycles from one hour to eight, delaying built-in alarms while cases heated to as much as 50°C (122°F).
Independent IoT temperature monitoring alerts retailers as soon as cold storage starts to warm, even when refrigeration controls have been hacked.In that incident, the alarms stayed silent, as the system that controls store refrigeration is often the only one reporting on it. Once attackers took over the controllers, they also controlled what staff saw. Many affected units were legacy models that no longer receive security updates.
Smart Business IoT places LoRaWAN sensors inside refrigerators and freezers to track temperature and door status. Readings travel through a RAD SecFlow-1p or ETX-1p IoT gateway to an IoT cloud platform, independent of the refrigeration controller. Because the sensors measure actual conditions in each case, a tampered defrost cycle shows up for what it is: A temperature curve heading the wrong way. Alerts reach managers’ phones while food is still within safe limits, and a central dashboard shows operations teams when temperatures rise at many stores at once. The pre-configured kit self-installs without on-site IT staff or changes to existing controllers.
“A refrigeration controller can’t be the only witness to its own failure,” said Eli Angel, Vice President of Product & Marketing at RAD. “No product stops every intrusion, but independent sensors on a separate connection tell store teams what is actually happening inside the freezer, in time to act.”
Smart Business IoT complements the controller access restrictions and security updates recommended by France’s cybersecurity agency, CERT-FR.
RAD’s Smart Business IoT solution is offered in the U.S. by a Tier-1 telco, to deliver actionable insights to business customers.
RAD is a global leader in networking edge solutions. As an industry pioneer for over 45 years, RAD reliably delivers best-of-breed Carrier Edge and AI-native networking solutions, together with post-quantum security and physical AI capabilities for Industrial IoT and 5G environments, to communications service providers and critical infrastructure operators in over 150 countries. RAD co-creates tailored solutions with customers, ensuring reliable, always-on connectivity from any location.
