The FBI said threats to farmers’ data include ransomware – when hacktivists encrypt files and make them unreadable until a ransom is paid; hackers could also destroy data to protest the usage of GMOs or other agricultural practices.
The FBI states that farmers “lacked awareness of how their data should be protected from cyber exploitation.”
It cites a 2014 American Farm Bureau survey that showed of more than 1,000 farmers who were going to invest in precision agriculture within the next two years, most were worried about unauthorized access of the data and only about five per cent knew their data storage providers had security response plans.
So how do farmers go about protecting their valuable information?
“The single most important protection measure against these threats is to implement a robust data back-up and recovery plan,” the FBI says, adding that it should be maintained in a separate location to keep it far away from hackers.