The Casual Cattle Conversations Podcast: Cybersecurity: The Biggest Overlooked Threat to American Agriculture

Cybersecurity: The Biggest Overlooked Threat to American Agriculture

On the surface cybersecurity may simply look like spam texts and emails that have no impact on the day-to-day operations or even future of family farms and ranches. However, it’s this mindset that makes it even more of a threat to American agriculture.

Why Cybersecurity Matters to Family Operations

Understanding what cyber-criminals are after is the first step of understanding this topic.

“If you go all the way back to any warfare or any sort of conflict, and the first thing that people go after in times of war is the enemy's food supply,” says Chris Sherman. “In a peacetime, ag is a major target because of the money that's going through it and information we are using.”

Sherman is the founder of TechSupport.Farm an IT company built for agriculture businesses which specializes in protecting clients from cybersecurity breaches.

Family operations, while often considered small, still have a large amount of liquidity compared to non-ag small businesses.

“Normal mom and pop small businesses might have 50,000 in the bank and 100,000 tied up in equipment or assets,” explains Sherman.” But in the farm, we're averaging about 500,000 in just the average checking account. Plus, we have well over a million dollars tied up in infrastructure, equipment and tools.”....



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