Cyberattacks and Frozen Snacks: What the Freezer Hack Means for IoT Resilience

Last week, a string of supermarkets in seven countries were forced to throw out millions of Euros worth of frozen food after their freezer units were disabled in a coordinated cyberattack.

Days later, refrigerators in a French blood bank suffered the same fate. While no patients were harmed or put at risk by the attack, the incident exposes the risks of a growing reliance on IoT systems, and why operators must continually reassess their cybersecurity and connectivity strategy. The supermarket attack alone resulted in several tons of wasted food, turning up the heat on supermarket chiefs and receiving a frosty reception from shoppers.

To avoid a potential thawing of customer relations, IoT companies and the brands who use them must make operational resilience central to their plans. In practice, this covers everything from daily systems reliability to cybersecurity, fallback procedures, and the ability to avoid or minimize the risk of downtime.

Something fishy is going on...

The incident is the latest in a series of hacks on businesses’ IoT systems. While the motives remain unclear and authorities are unable to (fish) finger the culprits, it’s now known that the rate of attacks is increasing and that the recent wave of freezer attacks across Europe has underlined just how embedded wireless connectivity is in daily life — and how often it’s taken for granted.

At the same time, the IoT market as a whole is set for accelerated growth, with 50 billion connected devices expected worldwide within the next decade.

IceOT: wireless connectivity and the 2026 freezer hacks

The incident reveals an interesting public blind spot: even something as seemingly straightforward as a refrigerator now utilizes wireless technology. Today, IoT is integral to the retail industry. It allows store operators to remotely manage the temperature of their systems, alert store staff to stock shortages, and provide insights into sales of individual products. The downside is made clear by the recent spate of attacks: any connected system is a potential target and must continually be defended. The resulting tons of spoiled food weren’t purely down to rotten luck: outdated systems, neglected firmware, and compromised connectivity all contributed. To avoid putting their business plans on ice, IoT companies need to take concrete steps towards a resilient network strategy.

From Reuters

It’s clear that the threat is multifaceted, and brands must make changes across multiple departments to stay protected. One of the most fundamental methods to avoid IoT fleet outages is implementing a reliable and secure connectivity supply.

Operational Resilience: how multi-network IoT can help

Some attacks target individual devices, stores, or fleets. Others affect the network level, causing massive signal outages that impact all connected IoT fleets, often impacting multiple companies. In 2022, a breach of the T-Mobile network forced the operator to pay a $220 million settlement.

In these events, the resilience of the network is out of the client company’s hands. They can, however, ensure their connectivity strategy is prepared.

Multi-network IoT connectivity is key to maintaining operational resilience in the face of signal outages and network-level cyberattacks. Instead of directly countering the threat, it provides fleets with an immediate source of backup connectivity.

When a fleet is connected to a single network, it is at constant risk of downtime: if the network drops, so do all operations. Multi-network connectivity provides a solution by always making several network connections available to each device. In the event of a signal outage, the device can re-connect to a backup network, continuing operations and minimizing the impact of downtime. 1GLOBAL offers a minimum of three available networks in 190+ countries, providing connected fleets with triple-locked protection against outages.

This multi-network capability is augmented by Multi-IMSI technology. Where multi-network connectivity provides the option to reconnect, multi-IMSI is the automated process whereby an IoT device constantly scans for and reconnects to the best available local network. Not only does this limit the possibility of downtime, but it ensures that each device is continually connected to the strongest possible signal, optimizing network efficiency.

Together, these two form the backbone of 1GLOBAL’s IoT service, helping businesses stay connected in the face of an increasingly volatile wireless industry.

Connectivity and security

Connectivity architecture is an important element of digital security. How the connectivity is routed, steered, and managed impacts the overall resilience of affected devices.

As well as holding gold-standard security certifications including ISO 27001 and GSMA SAS, 1GLOBAL IoT services allow teams to continually oversee, manage, and update their device software via industry-leading Remote SIM Provisioning (RSP). Built specifically for the new SGP.32 standard, 1GLOBAL IoT solutions are scalable, flexible plans built around the concept of a growing IoT fleet: as demand for wireless devices continues to rise, 1GLOBAL IoT plans can scale to match customer needs and fleet sizes – regardless of how many countries or markets they operate in. This is backed by end-to-end cryptographic authentication between the eSIM and eIM. Secure, instant RSP allows ongoing eSIM lifecycle management from a single digital hub, and alerts teams to any potential weaknesses across their fleets.

Containing threats through visibility and automation

As well as the technical aspects of real-time cybersecurity, companies require a bird’s-eye view of their fleet connectivity status. Security depends on knowing what connected devices are doing. Centralized monitoring, network diagnostics, device identification and automated policies can help operators detect unusual activity and respond quickly.

Predictive maintenance allows IoT companies to assess and address likely issues or weaknesses across their fleets before they occur. Doing so typically requires vast volumes of real-time fleet data, analyzed via AI tools and advanced models like digital twins.

Parsing this data and making informed decisions requires a single central control panel. The 1GLOBAL eIM, for example, provides teams with one point of access for all device fleets worldwide, greatly increasing the efficiency and accuracy of IT security decisions. Collating all fleet data in a single hub also allows teams to receive real-time alerts, assess company-wide analytics, and identify any weaknesses before they fail.

Lifecycle IoT security

Part of the reason behind the freezer attacks was a lapse in lifecycle management – according to Guardian, the affected units consisted of “old supermarket freezers running out-of-date software and newer models not having firmware updated.”

IoT deployments can remain operational for many years, during which networks, software, ownership and security requirements change.

Secure connectivity requires ongoing oversight, not simply protection at initial deployment. This is why remote SIM management, eSIM provisioning and SGP.32-based lifecycle control are increasingly valuable for retailers operating at scale.

Frosty the ombudsman: maintaining regulatory IoT compliance

For companies operating in multiple markets, this network security challenge is compounded. The freezer attacks affected stores across seven countries. In companies with multiple roaming agreements and network providers, these attacks can become exponentially damaging the more markets they impact.

This is because multinational IoT companies require IT, legal, and finance teams to negotiate individual roaming agreements in every country they operate in. Not only does this slow (or even halt) expansion into new markets, it places increasing administrative strain on internal teams as the number of devices grows. Simultaneously, they need to comply with local data protection and mobile regulatory law, which can differ or even contradict themselves across jurisdictions. Failure to do so does more

Even freezer companies want to avoid having their assets frozen. With an IoT connectivity provider like 1GLOBAL — with IoT services across 190+ countries, all through a single roaming agreement — IT teams are free to focus on the performance of their fleets, rather than wrestle constantly with competing regulatory and connectivity requirements.

1GLOBAL IoT

Wireless connectivity is so embedded in our systems, to the point of being taken for granted. With the number of these connections set to spiral in the coming years, companies must treat the recent cyberattacks as a call to reassess their own connectivity. The market analysis firm Juniper Research found that, “Whilst this handpicked list of cyber incidents may appear unrelated, they share a common, underlying theme: Artificial Intelligence being used by hackers to reduce the time needed to find and exploit such weaknesses.”

As the number of connected commercial devices rises, so too do potential attack surfaces, accelerated by AI-assisted tools. More than ever, operational resilience, regulatory compliance, and the ability to avoid downtime will come to define success and safeguard customers in the modern IoT space.

1GLOBAL helps brands build scalable, secure, and sustainable IoT systems. Find out more about our IoT services, or contact the 1GLOBAL team directly for a consultation.