Unfortunately, it’s very common for businesses of all types to become a victim of a cyber-attack, meaning farms in the UK and the Channel Islands are also vulnerable.
Findings from research conducted by the NCC Group suggests that the number of UK agricultural businesses experiencing cyberattacks is rising. In 2019 more than 60% of businesses reported one or more attacks, compared to 45% in 2018. This is largely due to the increasing digitisation of the industry, and trends like ‘smart farming’.
The NCC also found that while awareness of cyber security amongst the farming community varies widely, it’s generally considered to be low.
The threat to farmers
Whether it’s using livestock tags to monitor the welfare of your animals or drones to survey the health of your crops, the increased use of technology and farm management systems can help farmers increase productivity and reduce labour numbers and costs.
Alongside the many advantages and efficiencies of embracing technology, it can also bring with it challenges.
Like all businesses, farms hold employee, supplier and customer data that can be targeted, so systems need to be secure.
The three main cyber threats farmers may face include:
You can find more information on these cyber threats in our cyber glossary terms guide.
In addition, researchers at Harper Adams University point out that the agriculture sector faces its own unique challenges when it comes to cyber security. Food safety, reputation, animal welfare and the environment all heavily influence consumer demand, and cyber criminals will tap into these factors to cause disruption.
For example, farm management systems provide insights to improve profitability, and features to track farm assets, so cyber criminals may look to exploit this. A cyber-attack could lead to leaked confidential data that damages a farm’s reputation or even makes it a target for criminal gangs looking to steal farm assets.
Emotive topics such as animal welfare can also drive so-called hacktivists to target farms if they have concerns around the treatment of livestock. Hacktivists typically look for ways to cause financial damage and may do this in any number of ways. This could include leaking data from an agricultural database in a bid to ‘expose’ evidence of abuse or hacking a CCTV system to live-stream footage from a farm.
Stay protected against cyber threats
Having effective cyber security measures in place is crucial to protect farms against these risks. But many businesses in the agriculture sector are small and less likely to have strong enough defences in place, so their job can be made harder if they operate complex supply chains.
One of the most important steps for any business is raising employee awareness of the need to stay cyber secure. But there are lots more you can do.
As well as protecting your own business, remember the crucial role farms such as yours play in delivering food to people’s tables. So, it’s essential to stay secure and prevent cyber criminals from getting the upper hand.
Get Support
It’s not easy to protect your business from cyber threats, which is why so many businesses fall victim to this type of crime. To help, Islands Insurance has partnered with various cyber insurers who can provide as part of their policy, guidance via risk management tools and resource which previously may not have been available to the Farm and assist in limiting their risk of becoming a victim of a cyber incident.