Imagine plausible scenarios where an activist breaks into a remote water sensing system and shuts it down, a farmer loses access to years of production data stored on the family computer or privacy breaches result in legal proceedings from stolen sensitive personal information on farmers’ employees. Even a short outage can result in significant business and animal welfare consequences. Adding to it the potential for data manipulation, misreporting and reputational damage – the picture is bleak.
To shed light on this potentially damaging issue and provide industry with interventions to address this increasingly sophisticated threat, AgriFutures Australia has embarked on a new project with globally-connected cyber security experts, BDO Australia.
Working in consultation with other Rural Research and Development Corporations (RDCs), the project aims to explore potential cyber threats to producers’ business data, productions systems and intellectual property (IP). Whether you’re an established $100 million corporate farm or a new fishing business, greater awareness of potential threats is key to implementing best practice mitigation strategies and staying ahead of malicious cyber activity.
Phase one of the project is to explore the readiness levels across rural industries when it comes to securely managing data, IP and platforms. To achieve this, BDO Australia is conducting a survey and we need producers’ help to inform the current state of play.
AgriFutures Australia Senior Manager, Rural Futures, Jennifer Medway said a cyber attack can happen in the blink of an eye as the Australian wool industry found out last year. Wool sales across Australia were shut down for over a week in February 2020 causing huge disruptions to wool producers and the market, costing the industry dearly.
