Page 69 - Grapevine NovDec 2021

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Brown-Forman, E & J Gallo Winery, Molson Coors,
and the Campari Group.
The Earth Is Mine.
(What About Your Network?)
On the one hand, it’s a brave new world for the
farming and production aspects of winemaking,
thanks to automation advances. But on the other
hand, a great deal of manual labor is involved, and
despite advances, the wine industry is still consid- trols that regulate humidity levels inside a facility or
ered very much old-school, lagging behind other
industries when it comes to the use of technology.
When you consider the production process from
grape to glass, some of the greatest risk of cyber
exposure lies on the farming side. Growing the
perfect grape comes with a lot of moving parts,
and like other production businesses, enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems are in place to
track a variety of processes, from what pesticide
was applied on which date, to the costs involved,
etc. Whereas how these things are tracked will vary especially smaller ones, often track depletions
from vineyard
to vineyard, the
inator is that in Increasingly, cybercriminals
common denom-
people interact- are targeting the beverage
most cases the
systems are pre- industry. Lay down a strong
ing with these
dominantly field security plan now and watch
workers who
most tech-savvy. it come of age.
might not be the
Add to this the
fact that many
front-line remote systems are loosely managed and could spread via a spreadsheet attachment.
run on personal field laptops or mobile devices, and
you have an ideal attack vector.
Regardless of whether you are operating a small,
family-run vineyard or have a large-scale wine
operation, you face an even greater risk each
time you sit down at your desk. The vast major-
ity of cyberattacks begin with malware, typically
embedded in an attachment sent with a seemingly
innocuous email. Maybe it’s an invoice from a dis-
tributor you work with, maybe it’s your bookkeeper aspect. Customer relationship management(CRM)
asking you to review a document, or maybe it’s a
complete stranger, hoping you’ll slip up, open his
attachment, and launch a malware script that will
encrypt your data until you give in to his demands. They’re gold mines for those looking to sell that
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While unsecured computer systems and mobile
devices are common attack vectors, it’s safe to
assume that as your operation grows, so too does
your attack surface. Now wine operations have bar-
coded, inventory-tracking devices that are used on
a remote workflow in the field. That information is
fed into a central ERP system that’s tied to another
automation system, and so on throughout the pro-
duction process, as tank temperatures and acidity
levels are monitored. Then, too, consider the con-
the transfer of wine from tank to tank. Any and all
of these systems can be tampered with and if they
are, it can negatively affect the end product and
your business.
Data, Decanted
Outside the confines of your vineyard or winery lie
even further risks. Supply chains are attractive tar-
gets not just for the information they hold but the
damage they can inflict if disrupted. Distributors,
manually and
share updates via
email. Consider
the example of a
small warehouse
in Kansas City
that might have
20 pallets of your
wine and little
to no security
solutions in place
and then consid-
er how quickly
a threat vector
On the retail side of wine operations, both on-
and off-premise operations, offer up other strike
zones. Each of these channels has its own supply
and inventory management systems that track
activity all the way out to individual shops, bars,
and restaurants, which again, may or may not have
the strongest security posture.
Nor can you overlook the direct-to-consumer
systems that are used to manage your wine club
or market tasting events hold a wealth of personal
information, not to mention credit card numbers.
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