In a recent Food Engineering article entitled “BlackMatter ransomware targets food/agriculture sector,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends—among others—limiting access to resources over the network, that is, removing unnecessary access to administrative shares, and if these shares must be accessed, privileges should restricted to only the necessary service or user accounts needed to perform continuous monitoring for anomalous activity.
Unfortunately, most network systems need to be easy to access and exceptionally secure at the same time. These two paradoxical necessities all too often butt heads, and when administrators settle for the ease of use, cybersecurity goes out the door, leaving a system open to nefarious operators and executable programs.