Farming and agricultural equipment may not be at the top of the list when it comes to pinpointing items likely to suffer from a cyberattack. However, in the U.S. a major manufacture of agri-equipment has been targeted.
The company in question is AGCO, a leading US-based agricultural machinery producer. The form of attack, as with many economic areas, is ransomware. The attack impacted upon some of the firm’s production facilities.
AGCO did not provide any details as to what is causing the disruption, the company most likely shut down portions of its IT systems to prevent the attack’s spread. On May 16th 2022, the company issued a notification stating that most of its operations had resumed.
Commenting on the attack fir Digital Journal is Craig McDonald, Vice President of Product Management at BackBox,.
McDonald begins by placing the nature of attack with the context of the cyber-threats that have been bombarding the world economies, noting: “This attack on AGCO comes just a few short weeks after the FBI released a warning on ransomware attacks targeting the US agriculture industry.”
With the specific incident, McDonald says: “Due to the attack, the company has halted production at affected facilities and is unsure when normal business operations will return, which could ultimately impact the supply chain of ag equipment production.”
Looking at the form of the cyberattack more generally, McDonald provides advice for all businesses: “In the event of a ransomware attack or other security incident that results in network downtime, organizations must be prepared with proper backup and recovery efforts.”
In terms of firm recommendations, McDonald advises: “A solid backup and recovery plan must include collecting a complete inventory of all applications, software and hardware; outlining specific individual responsibilities in the event of a disaster and ensuring those individuals understand their responsibilities; having alternative communication methods in place; and carrying out regular reviews of this plan as a whole.”
McDonald further recommends utilizing newer technologies: “Automating these processes can help IT teams ensure high availability resilience by creating a central backup of network device configurations with one-click recovery.”
In addition, McDonald finds: “Automation is also critical to ensuring the network infrastructure has the latest patches and security updates to ensure its protected against the latest vulnerabilities that can lead to an attack like this. Scheduling regular backups, as well as knowing exactly what is being backed up and when, are key components to ensuring overall business continuity in the case of downtime. Companies that prioritize best practices for backup and unplanned network downtime will radically decrease time spent offline.”
