Since the start of the Ukrainian war, the German government and armed forces have seen a sharp increase in cyberattacks from Russia, which have also affected the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. But these computer attacks also affect private sector organizations of geostrategic importance, which, unlike public entities, tend to hide the scope of attacks so as not to damage their image, as long as they do not affect their clients. However, the threat was so great that the Schwarz Group, owner of the Lidl and Korfland supermarket chains, decided to make the data public. According to its CEO, Gerd Chrzanowski, they receive an average of 350,000 cyber attacks every day, which forces the company to make a great effort and security funds on this side.
“Before the war in Ukraine, we, as Schwarz’s group, received 3,500 attacks a day. Now we are attacked 350,000 times a day, mainly from Russia,” Chrzanowski declared in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung, “but a solution is on the way.” The group is working with American company ServiceNow to develop AI solutions against this type of interference in its systems. The software you develop is also made available to all other companies that want to use it, including retail competitors. “We compete in eggs, bananas and milk, but not in cyber security. We have to work together on that. If one of us gets attacked, it affects all of us,” Chrzanowski explained.
As demonstrated during pandemics, the supply and distribution of food and essential products in crisis or conflict situations acquires a geostrategic nature. Every time one of these cyberattacks penetrates the systems of supermarket chains, it endangers the flow of food and places in a highly vulnerable situation, especially in big cities. Those in charge of the sector have high hopes for a new “digital sovereignty”. “There’s data that shouldn’t reach a server in another country,” says the Schwarz group director, which requires a data infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist in the EU. More AI solutions for retail are in the works across Europe. “We are currently developing a new artificial intelligence platform together with ServiceNow, which is already working as a pilot project in 80 Lidl stores and which will be implemented in the near future in the entire supermarket network of the group and which we want to offer to all retailers in Europe in 2025,” promised Chrzanowski.
By 2025, when Schwarz plans to share his new cybersecurity tool, 41 billion devices will be connected to the Internet worldwide. The new cyber security strategy, presented by the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) in December 2020, aims to “strengthen Europe’s resilience against cyber threats and ensure that all citizens and companies can take full advantage of safe and reliable digital”, services and tools, so far mainly transport, Targeted at energy, healthcare and financial sectors. Small and medium enterprises on the other hand are clearly lagging behind, even though they are currently the most affected sector. According to a recent study by Akamai Technologies, with 49% of cyberattacks, small and medium-sized retailers are more affected in Europe than in the United States, with 42%. Germany ranks first with more than 3.1 billion cybercriminal attacks through the use of web applications, bots, phishing and third-party scripts. In particular, deep security breaches such as LFI attacks leading to remote code execution and network access, as well as ransomware attacks, are currently considered the biggest threats.
