Farmers as "Low Hanging Fruit"

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

Ever heard a farmer referred to as low-hanging fruit? It’s unsettling, isn’t it? But in the world of cyber-attacks, that is one descriptor for those in agriculture: low-hanging fruit.

Jen Pino-Gallagher is the Director of Food and Agribusiness Practice at M3 Insurance. She says cyber-attack claims have jumped in the last six weeks among agribusinesses. One strategy of attack is called “denial of service.” Attackers will attempt to overwhelm the target by sending multiple requests to a website at once.

“Google reported that when they were under attack back in August, at the peak, their system was receiving 398 million requests per second.”

I can hear you saying it. I’m not Google. She said farmers shouldn’t feel like they are overlooked. This is where that low-hanging fruit comes back. Cyber criminals often see agribusiness as an easy financial gain…

“What agribusinesses, what an individual farm, what an individual homeowner should be asking of their agent is do we have coverage for a cyber attack, what does that coverage look like? Oftentimes there might be a throw-in coverage that’s mixed in with either your homeowners policy or your farm policy, but truly if you want to have protection you should look at a standalone cyber liability policy.”

Along with insurance, there are some best practices. We’ll talk more about that right here tomorrow.