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IAM for NIS 2 Compliance in the Agri-Food Sector

The Allianz Risk Barometer published in January 2025 reveals that 31% of agri-food companies consider cyber incidents to be one of their top risks.
As production and processing chains in the agri-food sector are now largely automated and connected, these companies have become prime targets for malicious actors.

According to Agro Media, 36% of agri-food professionals were affected by a cyberattack in 2023, and 70% of those impacted experienced disruptions to their production or internal operations. The risks facing the sector directly impact food safety, and therefore consumer safety, through potential manipulation of temperature controls and sensors, alterations to ingredient lists, allergen labeling, and more.
In this context, agri-food companies must strengthen their security posture while maintaining their productivity requirements.

Given the nature of its operations, the agri-food sector is subject to strict compliance requirements, notably with the ISO 22000 standard, which outlines the requirements for food safety management systems (FSMS).
The sector is now also affected by the European NIS2 directive, which requires an increasing number of entities, which considered “essential” or “important”, to strengthen their security posture.
This regulation introduces a range of security requirements, particularly regarding Identity and Access Management (IAM).

Many agricultural cooperatives involved in livestock farming and slaughtering, as well as companies that design and manufacture food products, have chosen to implement the cyberelements platform to address their challenges in securing remote access (ZTNA), privileged access (PAM) to their IT and industrial systems, and to rigorously manage digital identities and access rights (IAM).
In this article, we’ll explore how a Zero Trust IAM platform effectively addresses the identity and access management challenges faced by the agri-food sector.

Security, Identity, and Access: What’s at Stake for Agri-Food Companies?

Traditionally dominated by operational technology (OT), which focuses on physical processes, industrial agri-food environments have undergone profound transformation over the past few decades. The scale of digital transformation has led to increased interdependence between IT and OT systems. This situation presents challenges in centralizing and securing both internal and external access to IT and OT systems, while also ensuring proper segregation between IT and OT environments.

A Digital Transformation That Expands the Attack Surface

  • The digital transformation of industrial agri-food environments also leads to increased interconnectivity between factories, which in turn broadens the overall attack surface. Adding to this is an extremely fragmented supply chain, which multiplies the potential entry points into IT and OT systems.

High Turnover Requiring Strict Access Management

  • Managing employee movements, onboarding and offboarding, represents another major challenge in the agri-food sector. Due to the seasonal nature of the industry, turnover is high. This forces companies to manage identities with great precision, including for temporary staff, as personnel changes occur frequently and regularly.
  • Ensuring secure and efficient identity management while maintaining a smooth user experience is essential. The NIS2 directive requires affected organizations, including those in the agri-food sector, to enforce strict access controls, ensuring that user accounts are active only when necessary and that inactive (orphaned or dormant) accounts are promptly removed.

A Multi-Site Organization That Increases the Complexity of Access Rights Management

  • Agri-food companies are often structured across multiple sites and subsidiaries, which adds further complexity to identity management. They frequently need to handle a wide range of user identities by integrating multiple identity sources—each with its own authoritative directory depending on the user type—and by segmenting the management of identities and access rights accordingly.

A Growing Number of External Providers Remotely Accessing IT and Industrial Systems

  • In addition, the widespread adoption of remote access, especially for privileged users like external service providers who need to perform maintenance on IT systems or industrial machines, makes access control an essential measure for the agri-food sector. Properly managing and securing these remote connections is crucial to prevent unauthorized access and protect sensitive operations.

Given the diverse skill sets within agri-food industrial environments, it is crucial to provide solutions that are simple, intuitive, and effective. These solutions must secure access to both IT and OT environments while ensuring that user productivity is not compromised.

Complying with NIS 2 for Identity and Access Management with cyberelements

The NIS 2 directive compels affected entities to reassess their security practices by addressing various aspects such as governance, management, organization, processes, and operational practices. Access security technologies for regulated information systems can help these entities directly meet the protection requirements outlined by the European directive.

Learn more about NIS 2

cyberelements is a Zero Trust, Identity-First access platform that delivers secure access and identity management capabilities for remote and on-site employees, third-party providers, and industrial operators. It addresses the specific access challenges faced by agri-food companies by providing secure connectivity to business applications and privileged systems through a range of key features.

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« Industrial Control Systems Security for the Food & Beverage Industry »

Strict Management of Workforce Movements in a High Turnover, Multi-Site and Subsidiary-Based Environment

The Advantages of cyberelements:

  • Automated management of employee movements and the entire identity lifecycle.
  • Powerful access rights rules engine that makes it easy to manage user roles and privileges, simplifying access rights administration and ensuring that each user has the right level of access at the right time.
  • Access rights management based on Segregation of Duties (SoD) principles.
  • Simplified management of users with multiple accounts and identities.

Digital Transformation Driving Factory Interconnection and Expanding the Attack Surface

The Advantages of cyberelements:

  • No resources are exposed on the internet due to protocol break technology.
  • Zero Trust access policies based on the “Never trust, always verify” approach, relying on least privilege and Just-in-Time (JIT) access to grant temporary permissions based on tasks, and Zero Standing Privilege to avoid permanent privileged access.

Supply Chain Fragmentation

The Advantages of cyberelements:

  • Session recording feature that captures all interactions during a session for analysis and compliance purposes.
  • Actions triggered by alerts on active sessions enable real-time responses to suspicious behaviors (such as notifying administrators and automatically terminating sessions).
  • Password vault with password injection ensures secure access for service providers without the need to share authentication credentials, guaranteeing the non-disclosure of authentication secrets.
  • Supports session sharing (four-hands feature), allowing multiple authorized users to collaborate within a session. This feature ensures that critical actions are performed with the necessary approvals and verifications.

The NIS 2 Directive Encourages Agri-Food Companies to Evolve Their Security Practices and Adopt New Standards:

  • Zero Trust approach,
  • Considering the user’s context and the task they need to perform on a resource at a given moment to define access rules (Zero Trust access infrastructure),
  • Protection against malicious intrusion with robust access infrastructure,
  • Privileged accounts security.

In Summary: NIS 2 Compliance, Security, and Productivity in the Agri-Food Sector

The NIS 2 Directive sits at the intersection of security, productivity, and compliance requirements in the agri-food sector. The cyberelements platform addresses these various demands. Through efficient identity and access management, agri-food companies can enhance their security, ensure compliance, and maintain business continuity.

Quick to install and easy to use, the cyberelements platform secures both IT and OT systems in the agri-food sector, encapsulating complex cybersecurity measures into tangible and physical devices. By streamlining and securing access to various systems and applications, it meets the agri-food industry’s preferences for simplicity and process efficiency.