Gene Kowel, the Special Agent in Charge of Omaha’s FBI Field Office, said the bureau is monitoring four major threats to agriculture, which include criminal ransomware attacks, malware from foreign adversaries, the theft of data and innovation from China, and bioterrorism impacting food production and the water supply.
As farming operations become increasingly data-intensive, Kowel said digital farm operations should all have multi-factor authentication in place. “In agriculture today, almost all of our data stored in the cloud, almost all of our complex farm machinery is connected to the internet, connected to the cloud, so protecting that control, protecting that data, is critical,” he said.
Kowel said increased awareness of the risks will help farmers better prepare for attacks and make them more likely to report incidents to law enforcement.
Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue said most farmers he talked to are more focused on day-to-day farming operations, especially during the labor-intensive summer months. McHargue encouraged farmers to visit the Nebraska Farm Bureau website for further cybersecurity education.
Read more at nebraskapublicmedia.org