Your Biggest Cyber Risk
IP SERVICES
This whitepaper highlights why unmanaged vendor access represents the single greatest cyber risk to the food and agriculture sector. It addresses how forgotten third-party credentials create silent doorways for attackers to disrupt critical operations.
Executive summary
The food and agriculture industries rely heavily on third-party vendors for operations like refrigeration, automation, and software integration. Although granting deep network access is operationally necessary, organizations frequently fail to deprovision credentials when contracts end or projects are completed. Attackers exploit these forgotten pathways—such as active, unmonitored VPNs lacking multi-factor authentication—to log in directly and cause major production disruptions without needing to exploit complex software vulnerabilities. To mitigate this operational risk, leaders must implement rigorous vendor governance, including mandatory multi-factor authentication, quarterly access reviews, and zero-trust monitoring.