Harvesting Data: Cybersecurity and the Agriculture Industry

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Written By Cate Urban
cybersecurity and agriculture

Drought, pests, labor shortage and now—cybercriminals. America’s agriculture industry which is almost entirely privately owned and composed of an estimated 1.9 million farms, over 700,000 restaurants, and more than 220,000 businesses dedicated to food manufacturing, processing, and storage. This mammoth sized industry is coming under attack from cybercriminals.  

According to a comprehensive review tracking the number of cyber incidents in America’s farming sector, the past decade has seen a scary rise in the number of cybercrimes at some of America’s largest agricultural companies. From 2011-2019 there were only 5 reported security breaches in the agriculture sector. This number shoots up to 89 security breaches from 2020-2023. Comparatively, there were 26 cyber incidents from 2011-2019. That number rockets up to 371 incidents in a three-year period from 2020-2023. All in all, researchers marked a total of 397 security incidents and 115 security breaches since 2015 with most of these cases happening in the last few years. According to the report, a security incident is “a security event that compromises the integrity, confidentiality or availability of an information asset”, and a security breach is “an incident that results in the confirmed disclosure – not just potential exposure – of data to an unauthorized party”.

What could happen?

  • Monsanto – In October 2023 Monsanto UK reported that they experienced a cyberattack by Ag3nt47, a notorious hacking group. This group typically targets large corporations with ransomware attacks. The incident was confirmed through a series of leaked communications and screenshots shared online. It became clear that the grou[p had access to valuable proprietary information, internal communications and sensitive product development information. Experts say the attack not only erodes farmer trusts in Monsanto’s security capabilities but could lead to a number of lawsuits against the mega agriculture corporation. 

  • JBS Foods – JBS Foods is a global meat processing center with operations in the United States. In June, 2021, the meat behemoth agreed to pay $11.1 million to end a five-day cyber siege that halted global operations. This attack was made by a sophisticated gang of cybercriminals.

  • Campbell Soup – In September 2023, Campbell soup said they detected a cyber intrusion in part of their IT network which disrupted plant operations in some factories in the U.S.

  • Dole – In February 2023 the world’s largest produce company said it was the victim of a ransomware attack which ended up costing $10.5 million dollars. The company said the attack impacted “approximately half of Legacy Dole’s servers and one-quarter of its end-user computers.”

What is at risk?

The American food and agriculture industry is foundational to the American economy. The industry represents about 10 percent of U.S. employment and 5.6 percent of the GDP. With the quality of technology increasing in this sector, so does the risk of cyber incidents. As shown in the incidents above, attacks typically come in the form of ransomware attacks and tend to disrupt plant operations and possibly disrupt the supply chain which in turn can raise prices. Ensuring cybersecurity in this sector is essential.

How to protect against evolving cyberthreat

Companies like WarCollar can help protect your business against the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape. We offers cybersecurity services from an innovative team of experts. We offer services for large, middle, and/or small businesses.

Commercial Penetration Testing: Penetration Testing (Pen Testing) uses real-world tactics, techniques, and procedures to create cyber-attack simulation to test the effectiveness of your IT security defenses, policies, and staff. WarCollar will assess your Information Security defenses by combining multiple testing strategies into a comprehensive offensive engagement, with the sole objective of gaining access to critical assets.

Compromise Assessments: WarCollar takes a proactive approach to cybersecurity that aims to identify, understand, and mitigate threats to organizations, individuals, and governments. Our skilled team provides high-level investigations using advanced tools to identify ongoing or past attacker activity in addition to identifying existing weaknesses in controls and practices. Our assessment will help reduce the security risk of attackers stealing financial assets, customer data or intellectual property.

Let’s Get Started!

Cate Urban

I founded Urban Web Renovations after 11 years of leading global marketing strategies for nonprofit organizations in Washington, DC. In each position I held, one thing remained the same – my passion for managing web sites and social media accounts for both organizations and major thought leaders.

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