FBI discusses cybersecurity risks for farmers at Omaha Ag Threats Symposium

More than 400 cybersecurity and agriculture professionals from 30 states were in Omaha Monday for the FBI’s second annual Agriculture Threats Symposium.

Gene Kowel, the Special Agent in Charge of Omaha’s FBI Field Office, said the bureau is monitoring four major threats to agriculture, which include criminal ransomware attacks, malware from foreign adversaries, the theft of data and innovation from China and bioterrorism impacting food production and the water supply.

“The cyber risk and the national security risk to our farms, our ranches, our food processing facilities — it's growing exponentially," he said. "The threats are evolving. They're becoming more complex, more severe.”

As farming operations become increasingly data intensive, Kowel said digital farm operations should all have multi-factor authentication in place.

“In agriculture today, almost all of our data stored in the cloud, almost all of our complex farm machinery is connected to the internet, connected to the cloud, so protecting that control, protecting that data, is critical,” he said.

Kowel said increased awareness of the risks will help farmers better prepare for attacks and make them more likely to report incidents to law enforcement.

Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue said most farmers he talked to are more focused on day-to-day farming operations, especially during the the labor-intensive summer months.

"To be honest with you, a lot of times when I talk to them about cybersecurity, their eyes glaze over, right?" he said. "We're just being honest, and that's the reason that these types of events are important for us to go back and share with them."

McHargue encouraged farmers to visit the Nebraska Farm Bureau website for further cybersecurity education.