Our food supply is one cyberattack from chaos

That warning deserves attention, because recent experience could easily lull us into thinking otherwise.

The UK food system adapted well to COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and cyber-attacks on retailers including M&S. But that success risks creating false confidence. None caused a catastrophic failure of food supply, so we should not mistake surviving them for proof that we are ready for worse.

The National Audit Office report highlights an uncomfortable truth. Food can exist but remain inaccessible when power, payments or logistics fail. Years of pursuing efficiency have made the system effective in normal times, but stripped out spare capacity, shortened lead times and left fewer buffers and alternatives when something goes wrong.

Some ‘inefficiency’ can be valuable from a resilience point of view. Alternative suppliers, substitute ingredients, simpler product ranges, cross-trained staff, and manual workarounds all carry unnecessary costs when everything is working. During a crisis, however, they become the options that keep shelves stocked and people fed. Real resilience means creating time and options, not simply more food.

For individuals, that does not mean filling a cupboard with tins nobody wants. A better approach is a rotating three-day menu that works without reliable electricity, water or refrigeration. Then test it. Try making dinner without the cooker, fridge or microwave.

Businesses need to take the same approach. Each company in the food chain should know its ‘minimum viable operation’. What could it produce, transport or sell if its ordering system went down, its main supplier stopped delivering or a key ingredient disappeared?

Those options then need to be actively rehearsed under simulated crisis conditions, not just a loose table-top exercise. Almost all resilience plans are built in a boardroom, filed away and simply trusted to work in a crisis. Every untested plan will contain gaps, so businesses should deliberately remove a critical system, supplier or facility and practice operating without it. The exercise must actually rehearse recovery, simply talking through the emergency is not the same as proving the business can operate under duress.

This is not an argument for every family to build a bunker or every business to maintain enormous warehouses. It is an argument for modest buffers, flexible choices and perhaps a shift away from constantly driving system efficiencies. The households and organisations that cope best may not have the biggest stockpiles, they will be the ones that have already worked out what they can do without.

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Jonny Pelter is a founding partner at cyber security specialists CyPro.

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