Agribusinesses Vulnerable to Phishing Scams

Agribusinesses Vulnerable to Phishing Scams

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

If cyber-crime was its own country, it would have the third-largest economy after the U.S. and China. That's how lucrative it is. How can your average agribusiness protect themselves? Special Agent Byron Franz with the Milwaukee Division of the FBI says it starts with training employees to understand phishing - that's phishing with a 'ph’.

Franz… “That's a targeted attack against you based upon email and text where they're trying to get you to click on a link or download an attachment of some sort, which has malware, bad software attached that allows them access to your network. Phishing is mass distributed pain. The attackers are pretending to be these people and conning them into, Hey, you have to do this to patch this.”

To protect your business, Franz recommends, among other things, multi-factor authentication.

Franz… “That means something more than a password. Multifactor is something you know, something you are or something you have. Something you know is a password. It doesn't matter how many passwords you got, it's still only one factor. Something you are is like biometrics, like a thumb swipe on your phone. And something you have is like a changing token, like providers like RSA and others provide.”

Franz added to make sure all passwords are strong.

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