Does your farming operation use the latest technology? Virtually every industry - agricultural ones included - is shifting operations, data storage and more to cloud-based technologies. And many forms of agricultural equipment run on sophisticated software behind the scenes. While it appears that these technologies operate without difficulty, robust security systems exist to keep your data - and your livelihood - secure.
This topic was recently analyzed in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report, Threats to Precision Agriculture. ProAg reports that because agriculture as an industry is only recently allowing cloud-based systems to manage previously labor-intensive processes, opportunities remain for the software and data to be compromised.
While agriculture might seem like an innocuous industry for hackers or foreign countries to manipulate, threats from the homeland play a bigger role in driving cybersecurity concerns. What if, for example, a disgruntled former employee could gain access to your systems? If temperatures in your poultry house are controlled remotely, what’s stopping a hacker from manipulating the settings and destroying your property?
These scenarios require consideration and preparation. DHS called out the three main principles for data security in the report: confidentiality of data, data integrity, and standardized availability (meaning that a bad actor could easily disrupt all users of a common software).
You can read the report for yourself to learn more about agriculture and cybersecurity. Above all, it’s important that these issues are coming to light, so farmers can take these issues seriously and prepare a solution that ensures their business can both leverage technology and remain secure.