Dairy farmers know firsthand just how quickly risks can impact their bottom line. Now, a new kind of risk is quietly moving onto farms: cyberattacks. This shift from physical to digital threats has left many farmers wondering where to turn for protection.
At this year’s MILK Business Conference, Andrew Rose, ag futurist with the Bioeconomy Information Sharing and Analysis Center (BIO-ISAC,) walked producers through what that evolving threat landscape looks like. He’s spent the past decade focused on protecting agriculture from cybercriminals, first as a volunteer, now as a specialist.
“Everything is a battlefield — cybersecurity, intrusions, misinformation campaigns, corporate espionage — this is white hot right now, whether it’s a foreign adversary wanting to acquire our assets or domestic going after another domestic one,” Rose says. “This is something that is not getting the attention I think it really deserves, but something to keep in the back of your mind.”
Awareness, mitigation and response guide how he approaches these threats, and he believes agriculture can strengthen its defenses by understanding the risks, preparing for disruptions before they hit and building a network of people who know how to react when something goes wrong.
The New Face of Threats
Today, threats don’t just come in the form of market swings or equipment failures. Warfare has gone digital and invisible.
“When we think about warfare as Americans, we think about bullets and bombs and boots on the ground,” Rose says.
But who is attacking farmers and what do they want? Why target agriculture at all? According to Rose, it’s nation-states like Russia, North Korea and China. They are actively probing systems for money, information and long-term strategic advantage, and agriculture offers both the data and the leverage they are looking for.
“Russia and North Korea, they want money. North Korea targets a lot of the Bitcoin wallets, but they’re also very good at putting ransomware out there,” he explains. “China has a different motivation. What they want is information. Whether that information is useful today or not is immaterial, but it might be useful in the future.”
Threats Close to Home
Rose also warns that animal activist groups continue to evolve their tactics, moving beyond on-farm trespassing or undercover videos. Some are now probing digital systems, spreading misinformation online or seeking ways to disrupt operations. Their goal might differ from foreign adversaries, but the impact can be just as damaging when they manipulate data or target equipment vulnerabilities.
“A lot of folks don’t really weigh how devastating it can be if you have an employee. That employee may inadvertently do something, or an outsider comes and says: ‘Hey, I will pay you if you just give me this login,’” Rose says.
Animal activism and information campaigns also fall into the “gray zone” of threats. Rose points to raw milk campaigns, noting that “there were certain open doors, open windows in the dairy pasteurization equipment that a bad actor could get into and manipulate temperature controls, but the readout would be fine, and that really got us worried.”
While activists might have ideological goals, the practical impact on farms can be real.
Dairy operations increasingly rely on digital tools like herd management software, milking equipment, feed programs and financial systems, but in the rush for efficiency, security is often an afterthought.
“All we thought about was the flow of information and keeping things as quick as possible,” Rose says. “They’re not thinking about secure by design.”
Practical Steps for Farms
Rose says one of the easiest defenses is right in your pocket.
“Restart your phone every day,” he recommends. “Why? Because your phone has temporary memory, and that’s where that malware sits, because the scans that your software does doesn’t scan the temporary memory. By resetting your phone every day you wipe that out.”
He adds that a daily reboot helps your phone load security patches more quickly.
“There are so many different exploits that happen every day, these zero-day exploits,” Rose adds. “If something happens and your phone company finds it, they’ll put a fix in there, but that fix might not be triggered until you have an automatic restart. If you restart your phone every day, that goes in there.”
Passwords matter too.
“Don’t use your same password twice. And it’s not because someone is going to figure out your password,” he says. “They’re going to hack into the company where your password is stored, and they’re going to take that and cross apply it across platforms.”
Beyond personal devices, Rose encourages farmers to take inventory of what on their operation is connected to the internet.
“You guys have got a lot of tech out there on the farms,” he says. “Know what’s connected to the internet. Know what the passwords are. It’s pretty simple to do an inventory like that.”
He also stresses the importance of protecting backups and insurance documents.
“When a bad guy gets into your system, the first thing they do is they go and they shred your backups, and the second thing they do is look for insurance documents, because they want to know how much your insurance company is going to pay for a ransomware attack,” Rose says.
Keeping those documents offline, he says, can save time and prevent added damage.
Planning ahead is essential as farms adopt more digital tools. Rose urges farmers to ask hard questions before bringing new equipment or software onto the operation.
“What if our computers are bricked? What if we have no access to the internet? What if we no longer have GPS?” he asks.
He recommends involving the entire team in those conversations, not just the manager. That includes the veterinarian, banker, co-op and even local law enforcement.
“I know that sometimes people get a little edgy about bringing law enforcement in,” Rose says. “It’s a lot better to know law enforcement before something happens than after it happens. Make a friend before you need it.”
Preparation is the Best Protection
For dairy farmers, the move from physical to digital risk can feel unfamiliar, but the path forward is not. Rose reminds producers that small habits, thoughtful planning and strong community ties can go a long way in keeping their information and equipment safe.
Cybersecurity does not require fear. It requires awareness. And as farms continue to adopt new tools and technology, the producers who take the time to prepare today will be the ones who stay resilient tomorrow.
