Technology Leads to Vulnerability in Agriculture

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

Technology makes a lot of things possible in agriculture that weren’t around 50 years ago…heck, that weren’t even around 10 years ago…but experts are now saying that it’s important to realize that modern farm technology is vulnerable to attacks by hackers, which could leave the supply chain exposed to further risk.

The University of Cambridge issued a report noting that automatic crop sprayers, drones, and robotic harvesters are susceptible to an attack. The BBC says both the United Kingdom’s government as well as the FBI are warning that the cyber-attack threat is growing.

John Deere says it’s working to fix any weak spots in its software. James Johnson is Deere’s chief information security officer and says the company has been working with several ethical hackers to find vulnerabilities. CNH Industrial is also working to improve its security posture. And Benjamin Turner, chief operating officer at a British company called Agrimetrics, says that, “Hacking into one tractor can upset a single farmer’s profitability. Hacking into a fleet of tractors can suddenly give you the power to affect yields in whole areas of a country.”