With hackers targeting small to medium size enterprises (SMEs), and with one being hacked every 19 seconds, Naq Cyber co-founder and CEO, Nadia Kadhim, warned that poorly protected farming businesses need to take the threat of cyberattacks seriously due to the damaging follow-on effects a compromised business can have on the rest of the supply chain.
“Criminal groups are targeting agricultural businesses more and more due to the flow-on disruption to other industries, such as transport and retail,” says Kadhim, a former Child Rights Lawyer and GDPR expert turned cybersecurity start-up founder.
“Quite simplistic but sophisticated methods are being used and agriculture is an easy target due to the use of technology in many different aspects of the business.”
Naq Cyber, and founders Kadhim and Chris Clinton, completed the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre’s accelerator programme and soon partnered with Farm491 after being contacted by several farm businesses that had been breached and seeking support.
“Cyber security is about data, but also the system as a whole. One specific agricultural issue that we’ve been investigating with the help of Farm491 is that there is a large risk for some farms to be targeted by animal rights or vegan activists.
We can support farms to take preventative action by scanning specific parts of the web to see if the farm name or location has been mentioned and if there are public events planned.
“Unfortunately, when SMEs are hacked, the financial loss can be between £8,000 to £300,000 alongside the loss of business, reputational damage, and operational disturbance.
“In addition, the Information Commissioner’s Office has also started to crack down on data breaches and non-compliance with GDPR with fines ranging from £15,000 – 25,000.”
Naq Cyber has also noticed that during the pandemic there are more farmers creating websites to support their marketing which can further increase their risk to cyber-attacks.
“We take their website details and then scan the ‘dark web’, a hidden collective of internet sites favoured by hackers, for any mention of the farm which then feeds into their system.
“We use this combined with best practice cyber security to then create a Cyber Security Action Plan which details, step by step, what the company needs to do to protect themselves and why it is important.”
