Feeding the World Requires a New Approach to Security
Every day, Ingredion helps feed the world. While the company doesn't make the food on store shelves, it creates the solutions and ingredients that make it all possible. With about 12,000 employees in 29 countries, the company develops ingredients, formulations, and innovations used by many of the world's leading food manufacturers. When its plants run, food gets made. When they stop, store shelves feel it.
That's one of the many reasons security matters to this sector. Food companies run on tight supply chains and just-in-time delivery. Downtime is agony, and agony creates pressure to pay.
Manufacturing has topped the IBM X-Force list of most targeted sectors for five straight years, drawing more than a quarter of all attacks in 2025. The food sector is feeling the squeeze directly. It's no wonder that food and agriculture is now considered one of the nation's critical infrastructure sectors, with many lawmakers equating security with national security.
For Ingredion, cybersecurity has moved from an IT concern to a boardroom, consumer, and public trust issue.
The threats are always evolving
Ingredion CISO Kenneth Townsend's mission is clear: align security with the business and protect the systems that matter most. His team runs security strategy, governance, risk, compliance, identity, security operations, and data protection across the company. The stakes are concrete. Plant availability, on-time delivery, and intellectual property sit at the heart of the business.
Townsend reaches for history to explain how the threat environment has changed.
"The landscape is constantly changing," he says. "Bank robbers don't use stagecoaches and revolvers anymore. They've adapted, and security measures have adapted the same way."
Today's cyber defenses face the same test. Teams that rely on firewalls and rule updates alone find it impossible to keep up.
Frontier AI puts attacks on fast-forward
Previously, a software flaw could sit undiscovered for a decade. Frontier AI has changed the clock.
"While exploits could have been out there for years and undiscovered, now the scary part with Mythos and other frontier models is the speed," Townsend says. "It's a force multiplier, not only for organizations, but for the threat actors as well."
Townsend offers an example. A threat actor who knew how to compromise only Windows or Linux systems can now ask an AI model for help. Armed with AI, that attacker can span an entire footprint, at speed and at scale.
Industry data backs that up. X-Force ties last year's 44% jump in attacks on public-facing applications in part to AI tools that find security flaws faster.
You can't outpace AI attacks
Trying to out-patch AI-armed attackers is a race Townsend refuses to run. In his words, teams that go down that road are going to be chasing their tails trying to find vulnerabilities, and that's just a losing game. He describes the goal instead as resilience: detect fast, withstand attacks, contain the damage, and keep the business running.
"I'm not out here trying to plug every hole in the dam," Townsend says. "I'm focusing on the priorities."
So Ingredion segments what matters most first. Tier one systems get only the access they need. Security teams know what traffic talks to those systems and who can reach them. The discipline pays a bonus, too. It forces the company to understand its own business.
The payoff shows up on the worst day. Even when an attacker slips past outer defenses, the systems that matter most stay walled off. "If the controls we had set up are bypassed," he says, "I have confidence that those systems are going to be isolated."
Segmentation made simple
Townsend talks about segmentation with the authority of someone who has the scars. "I've done segmentation projects in the past," he says. "Those projects were very difficult to do."
Illumio changed the experience. Ingredion can see how its applications talk to each other and test policies before turning them on. The process runs on collaboration, not surprise.
His team works closely with application owners to validate proposed segmentation policies before enforcement. Using Illumio's visibility into application communications, they review how applications interact, identify what traffic would be affected, and refine policies as needed. Teams can observe traffic patterns over time, confirm expected behavior, and build confidence before moving into selective or full enforcement. Nothing goes live until stakeholders understand the impact and are comfortable with the outcome.
Building security for the AI era
The threat data points one way: more attacks, moving faster, aimed at the companies the world depends on most. As AI keeps making attackers quicker, Townsend believes security leaders must shift their priorities. No security team can patch faster than attackers can innovate. The way forward combines layered defenses with segmentation, containment, visibility, and resilience.
For Ingredion, that means focusing on what matters most: know the business, find the critical systems, shrink the attack surface, and keep operating even when threats break through.
When breaches are all but certain, resilience becomes the real competitive edge. With Illumio, Ingredion is making that resilience central to its cybersecurity strategy, helping keep the world's food supply moving.
