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Mar. 13, 2026 by Dave Swain is President and CEO of Vision Technology Management as it appeared in CropLife magazine
I hate to think how many times I've heard this response when I ask agricultural businesses about cybersecurity. Really? Let's go back in time to when precision ag was in its infancy. I would talk with customers about implementing an online backup system. You would have thought I'd asked for their firstborn. The response was almost always the same: They could not -- and would not -- connect a phone line to their computer (the way computers accessed the internet at the time). Just in case. Fast forward to today and it's still "no big deal." Again ... really? The reality is that agriculture has already been a target of cyberattacks. Several ag companies have been hit and became serious enough that in 2022 the FBI issued a cybersecurity alert for U.S. agriculture -- also referencing Australia and the United Kingdom. The alert was specifically tied to several critical infrastructures, and agriculture is one of them. Did you still say it's no big deal? One statistic I came across showed more than 70 cyberattacks on agricultural organizations since 2021. That number alone should make anyone pause. Why agriculture? Agriculture is a foundational industry in North American economies. While it may not be as much as it used to, agriculture has historically been an economic indicator -- and it still impacts countless other industries. This includes freight and logistics, supply chains, food and beverage, foreign trade, and inputs into manufacturing and energy. And that's just at the macro level. Zooming in to a more micro level, let's look at precision agriculture. For years, the industry has debated data ownership. Who owns the data? Who controls it? The truth is simple: Hackers don't care who owns it. If they get access to the data, they can get control. And suddenly, "knowledge is power" takes on a whole new meaning. We're no longer talking about information. We're talking about operational control. To read the entire article click here. Tweet |
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