Security against cyber-attacks on refrigeration

03 Nov 2026

Following the October cyber-attacks on refrigeration across France; on Nov 2, supermarket stores were compromised across Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden and Ireland.

“The vulnerability of the affected supermarkets is based upon an insecure connection,” says David Andrews of Space Engineering Services. “The public IP addresses of these systems were able to be reached externally.

“Technically, it is not a hack but a miss configuration. The systems can be accessed through the internet. Hopefully, this will act as a wake-up call, not just for our industry, but for others that use similar remote connections.

“At Space, we offer our clients multiple ways to combat such threats, including our inhouse secure remote VPN option. This gives our clients a secure system to work with, allowing us to manage their refrigeration systems and prevents a potential ‘man in the middle’ attack when 3^rd parties provide a remote solution.

“We also have a higher tier enablement available, enhanced intrusion prevention, so in the unlikely event of a breach for our internal system, we can identify and nullify the threat,” said David.

With the continuation of these attacks looking likely, it is important for UK refrigeration to identify these threats to establish a robust defence using secure connections.

David concludes: “With the threat of AI being used as a tool for such attacks, this is an issue that will become more serious as the technology evolves to be able to infiltrate systems in the future.”

(image: Picture of a roof void network cabinet that routes local traffic, one of the methods of bad actors gaining access.)