While food and beverage processors have been scrambling to protect their process control equipment, intellectual property (IP) and IT/OT systems from cybersecurity/ransomware attacks, their efforts may be outpacing the Federal Government, which should be setting an example by having secured its own agencies from cyberattacks. How can the federal government provide cybersecurity assistance to private and public companies when its own cybersecurity affairs may not be in order?
In a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled, “Cybersecurity: Federal Actions Urgently Needed to Better Protect the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure,” GAO found that out of 3,700 recommendations made to government agencies directed at fixing cybersecurity shortcomings, as of November 2021, 900 of those recommendations were not yet implemented.