A diverse range of speakers will be discussing key agricultural topics over three days at the event, to be held Jan. 20-22 at the Keystone Centre in Brandon. The presentations will take place at the Centre’s MNP and FCC theatres.

WHY IT MATTERS: The annual speaker schedule at Manitoba Ag Days 2026 will again include a mix of well-known personalities, key farm production and farm business knowledge sessions and more.

Organizers of the speaker series endeavour to stay current with the latest developments in ag, said Hannah Minshull, program committee lead for Manitoba Ag Days. However, agronomy is an evergreen subject.

“We try to touch on agronomy and weather and anything that’s relevant in the industry. It varies from year to year,” she said.

“In the last couple of years, geopolitics has sort of become a topic of interest, so we have had some geopolitical speakers. It just depends on what’s going on in the industry as to where we focus our attention.”

This year’s series will include six feature speakers. They are:

• Bryan Buhler, “Farming Simulator: an Opportunity to Learn and Discover”
  Jan. 20, 10:15-11 a.m., MNP Theatre
  Buhler, a mod creator for the popular Farming Simulator video game, will speak on how virtual farming can educate those unfamiliar with agriculture as well as offer something new to the well-versed. Those in attendance will have a chance to win one of five collector’s edition box sets of Farming Simulator for PCs.

• Sylvain Charlebois, “Feeding the Future”
  Jan. 20, 1:30-2:30 p.m., MNP Theatre
  Dalhousie University’s Sylvain Charlebois — known across Canada as “The Food Professor” — will explore how Canada can safeguard its food security while growing its competitiveness in a volatile world.

• Jacob Shapiro, “Geopolitics: What Lies Ahead?”
  Jan. 21, 11-12 a.m., FCC Theatre
  Shapiro, with Perch Perspectives LLC, will break down current global trends and the opportunities they may drive for Manitoba farmers.

• Greg Peterson, “Machinery Pete”
  Jan. 21, 3-4 p.m., FCC Theatre
  Peterson, considered one of the most trusted voices in farm equipment, will offer an insider’s look at the newest trends shaking up the ag equipment market.

• Val Caldwell, “Staying Secure in a Digital World”
  Jan. 22, 9:30-10:15 a.m., FCC Theatre
  Digital safety expert and independent consultant Val Caldwell will dive into the risks lurking online and the practical steps you can take to protect yourself and those around you.

• Fireside Chat with Arlene Dickinson
  Jan. 22, 2:30-3:30 p.m., FCC Theatre
  Dragons’ Den star Arlene Dickinson will share insights on the global competitiveness of Canadian-made products, building resilient domestic value chains and fostering consumer loyalty to local goods.

Dickinson is no stranger to agricultural commentary or investment. Speaking at the recent Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute’s (CAPI) conference in Ottawa, she talked about the international opportunities available to Canadian agriculture.

“My pitch would be this is absolutely a marketplace and an industry and a sector that needs full attention and can provide gigantic return profiles to our country, not just financially, but from a social perspective as well,” she said.

“So, it really hits all the buttons. Why wouldn’t you invest in it?”

Getting Dickinson on the schedule was a coup for Manitoba Ag Days, said Minshull, who identified the fireside chat as one of the presentations she’s looking forward to the most.

“(She’s) someone that we have talked about having on our program for a few years, and just have never, ever been able to make it happen,” she said.

Although not among the featured speakers, Minshull is also excited about the return of producer Scott Day to the speaker series. He will present “The Sky is Falling and the Cows are Coming Home” where he will convey his takes on ag technology. It takes place Jan. 21, from 1-2 p.m., also in the FCC Theatre.

“He is a very well-known speaker for the agriculture industry, born and raised in southern Manitoba.

“That’s always good to have someone like that come back and connect with the ag industry.”

Panels and youth highlighted

Ag Days organizers are experimenting with the speaker formula this year, said Minshull. An example is the Manitoba Young Speakers for Agriculture, which starts at 8:45 a.m. on Jan. 20 at the MNP Theatre.

Virtual preliminary competitions will take place over December and January, with the top four in the junior (11-15-year-olds) and senior (16-24) categories presenting live at Ag Days. The winners will be announced during the morning session.

“The winner of each of those categories has the opportunity to go on to the national speaking competition in Toronto next November,” she said.

Also new this year are panels covering a wide range of subjects. They include:

• Verticillium Stripe: Because Farming Wasn’t Hard Enough Already
  Jan. 20, 10:15-11:30 a.m., FCC Theatre

• Farmer Panel: A Conversation About Farm Profitability
  Jan. 20, 1-2:30 p.m., FCC Theatre

• Chem Company Showdown
  Jan. 22, 10:15-1:15 a.m., FCC Theatre

• Beyond Data Transparency: How Industry Co-operation Improves Choice for Farmers
  Jan. 22, 11:15 a.m.-12:00 p.m., FCC Theatre

There will also be a screening of Deep Rooted on Jan. 21 from 4:45-6 p.m. in the MNP Theatre. This documentary explores the mental-health crisis facing agricultural producers across Canada. It follows four ag producers discussing their mental health and how it relates to farming.

For full show coverage, previews, video and more, check out the Manitoba Co-operator’s Ag Days landing page.

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A grain drying system was on the list in late October when the RCMP reported a string of incidents where internet accessible control systems had been hacked.

In one case, water pressure values were tampered with at a community water facility, an Oct. 29 release noted. False alarms plagued an oil and gas company after hackers got access to a automated tank gauge. In the case of the farm, temperature and humidity levels were altered — a potentially dangerous prospect when it comes to grain dryers.

WHY IT MATTERS: Grain dryer settings are carefully controlled to reduce the risks of a dryer fire.

Ottawa warned that many of these systems in use on farms are old and have outdated security features, which allows hackers to gain access to them and then into other programs controlled by the same device.

Hacks have taken various forms from malicious damage to ransomware attacks.

According to a 2024 survey by MNP, farms may be particularly vulnerable to these types of attacks, with hackers targeting the various internet accessible control systems used, such as grain bin monitoring or automated dairy barn systems. Adding to that vulnerability, the survey found 80 per cent of the 541 farms in the study had no security plan in place.

“(Farmers) are rapidly modernizing things with connected tractors and remote sensors with everything automated, like watering bowls and grain dryers” says Tyler Moffitt, senior security analyst at OpenText Cybersecurity.

“The problem with many of these systems is they were never designed to be connected to the internet. They’re decades old, designed to last 20 years and not fend off modern tactics and modern criminals.

“Hackers, whether it’s for money or activism, know this and they probe for misconfigured or unauthenticated access every day. That’s usually how they get in.”

That means these older control systems provide an easy gateway to gain access to a farm’s digital system. And once in, they can then infiltrate other programs and software.

“Hackers don’t struggle,” he adds.

These kinds of attacks have caused serious damage at chemical plants and other types of industrial operations just by something as simple as disrupting temperature controls, causing explosions or other damage.

Historically, hackers were motivated by activism, such as animal rights groups, but now attacks are primarily motivated by money through ransomware.

“They cut off your (file) access and demand payment to restore them,” says Moffitt.

While paying these extortionists isn’t a guarantee they will restore files and service, Moffitt says most of the time they do.

“The ransom or extortion racket wouldn’t have any credence and no one would pay if they didn’t get operations back,” he says.

“So around 95 per cent (do).”

“It’s bottom of the barrel ethics justifying what they did. In the ransom note, they try and phrase it as if they’re doing you a service.”

Many attacks come from groups associated with unfriendly countries, such as Russia and North Korea. The number and co-ordination of attacks on infrastructure tends increase when hostilities break out, such as the invasion of Ukraine.

After an announcement that Canada was pledging some material support for Ukraine, a railway was attacked by one of these groups.

Major farm equipment manufacturers such as Agco and Lemken have also been victimized.

However, other criminal groups are also engaging in hacks.

Segmenting access to different online operations, keeping access to various software separate, such as through a VLAN (virtual local area network), can limit the damage from a hack.

If possible, removing systems from internet access removes the risk of hacker getting in through them.

“Set up secure gateways, rather than open ports,” Moffitt suggests.

“Multi-factor authentication is probably the biggest single thing you can do stop them.”

That involves authorizing access through two or more ways such as with an online password verified by a text sent to a cellphone at an predetermined number.

“Identity is the new perimeter,” Moffitt says.

“It’s the new attack (method) criminals are going after.”

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We watched as the miniaturized, fictional mammals scampered across night-time kitchens in the televised public service announcements of our youth, left peanut butter footprints on plates and had confrontations with house cats.

“That looked really real, but you knew it couldn’t be true, didn’t you?” the narrator would break in as the background faded to an African landscape.

It was a message we got from our teachers, parents, cartoons and, yes, the now nostalgia-laced clip from Concerned Children’s Advertisers: Ask questions. Don’t believe everything you see on a screen.

Given how adept artificial intelligence has become at generating text, photos and video, the message is arguably more relevant today than when it was running between BopIt! ads and the Kool-Aid Man.

Sources who spoke to our reporter Jeff Melchior for his recent cover story on misinformation and disinformation would likely agree.

“There’s so much information available, but what is right and applicable? That’s very difficult to decide, given that so much information is there,” University of Guelph researcher Ataharul Chowdhury said.

The very same day as we were preparing that article for publication, major news outlets reported a police raid on the compound of “Queen” Romana Didulo and her faithful — a movement so successful in QAnon-style misinformation and disinformation they’ve convinced followers that Didulo is sovereign of the “Kingdom of Canada.”

Just days prior, a CBC report noted the growing problem of AI-generated or altered severe weather images, leading to Environment and Climate Change Canada getting erroneous reports. Storm chasers cited in that article noted that the phenomenon was impacting their credibility.

Anyone who has dipped a toe into social media has likely seen the proliferation of fake content floating around online. It ranges from blatantly AI photos with too many fingers to online classifieds listings that are actually scams, to “screenshots” of sensational (and very fake) headlines edited with what appears to be the header and format of major news outlets .

A Google search and 20 seconds of due diligence quickly uncovers that no such article exists. On social media though, many keyboards get tapping and share buttons get clicked for every digital literate who takes the extra effort to verify. Each one of those keyboard warriors can spread the proverbial misinformation infection alarmingly fast.

Social media, by its nature, is prone to echo chambers. It feeds you content similar to what you’ve already engaged with and lets you talk to the people you’ve decided you want to talk to.

It also tends to aggregate people with similar interests or worldviews. That’s great when connecting with other people who like hiking, not so much when the common interest in question is an extremist view or a conspiracy theory.

Cami Ryan, who, in her off hours away from her role with Bayer Global, is an advocate warning against misinformation and disinformation was clear: The people seeding disinformation have something to gain from it.

It’s often rooted in ideology, she noted, but it’s also business looking for recruits to exploit.

“People are making money or getting value from disinformation,” she told Melchior. “That’s 100 per cent how it is.”

It’s her view that farmers’ generally pragmatic approach to life might help them sort fact from fiction, but they still live in the online world, she cautioned.

The unfortunate truth is that some groups that thrive on mis/disinformation dangle hooks in the same spheres that farmers, who may have legitimate criticism and frustrations with the federal government, populate. It’s easy to poke holes in something we’re already inclined to disagree with. It’s much harder if the premise broadly aligns with a political, religious or social perspective that we subscribe to. Disinformation creators are well aware of that vulnerability.

Chowdhury, meanwhile, also pointed to a growing lack of trust in science, which he says leaves more room for misinformation to take root.

In agriculture, he linked that to growing corporate interest in things like agricultural research and extension hitting the perceived neutrality of scientific work.

It’s true that farmers may have some cynicism in that regard, although it’s not just corporate interests. Farmers are also miffed at what they see is a politically driven hyperfocus on climate change in publicly funded research.

He’s also right that farmers have seen a contraction in public or farm-group extension. Only weeks ago, the Canola Council of Canada cut its field agronomy team, saying that farmers could seek those services with private agronomists, companies or provincial extension staff (roles that have also been rolled back in certain provinces in recent years).

So what are farmers to do?

Technology is always adapting, and we are adapting in our interactions with it. Many of us have changed our cell phone behaviour, for instance, to protect ourselves from scams.

It is no longer uncommon for someone to say that they don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t know. They screen their text messages. They don’t click unsolicited links or give out personal information and, if they want to check if a message about a bill or account is valid, they contact their provider independently.

In the same way, as Melchior’s sources argue, we need to develop defences against misinformation and disinformation. That includes digital literacy (there are already farmer-facing programs for that on offer in Manitoba). It also involves a conscious decision to pay attention to what we’re seeing rather than taking it at face value.

Does it make sense? Where did it come from? Can you confirm that it came from there? Are there any details that seem out of place? Does a little independent research (from reputable sources) back up or contradict it?

Just like putting on a seat belt or deleting suspicious emails unread, these defences must be automatic, consistent and something you encourage in those around you as well.

The post Guarding against misinformation: Do you believe in house hippos? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

That was the message from Janos Botschner, a behavioural scientist and researcher with the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance. Botschner spoke at the Crop Connect conference in Winnipeg on Feb. 12.

“It’s better to talk together and build support with one another than to suffer in silence and maybe be victimized again,” he said.

Why it matters: Farming is far from safe when it comes to cyberattacks. Producer groups, agribusinesses and even individual farms have fallen prey.

Because farms and farm equipment are increasingly digitized, real world obscurity doesn’t necessarily offer protection. People on the other side of the world can be as close as neighbours through an internet connection.

In recent years, large companies like JBS, Sollio Agriculture and Maple Leaf Foods have been targets of cyber attacks. However, Botschner noted that individual producers have also been victimized.

Most cyber criminals are simply looking to make a buck, Botschner said. Some may use ransomware to try to exploit rural communities, small and medium food processors, farm businesses and other parts of the food value chain. If they try multiple victims, even if only a few respond to demands, they’ll make money. In the case of the ransomware attack against Maple Leaf Foods, the company later said that total cost to their bottom line ran up to $23 million after hackers locked down their systems and the company refused to pay.

Cybersecurity can be similar to other concepts with which farmers are already familiar, like pest management, livestock health, health and safety and mental health, Crop Connect attendees heard. Farmers are often already committed to lifelong learning, risk management and helping one another.

“If we can start to open up our minds and see, ‘Oh, wait a minute, this is not that different’ … maybe some baby steps toward cybersecurity can be a little bit more achievable,” Botschner said.

“It’s no one’s shame if something happens because we’re all vulnerable … But the more we know and the more we start to create those frictions, the harder it is for us to just be victimized by a drive-by cyberattack.”

His organization has free, agriculture-specific cyber security resources. That includes guidance on how to develop a cybersecurity policy for a farm. Botschner joked that this could be as simple as a sticky note on a dashboard, reminding people to not click links without verifying the sender.

Other resources include basic steps for farm cybersecurity; questions to ask agricultural technology vendors when preparing to buy or subscribe to digital technologies and tips for developing a business continuity plan for cyber incidents.

The post Farmers need to talk more about cybersecurity: speaker appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Equipment manufacturers across the board are working to protect their digital systems against malicious intrusion. At the same time, those defences have to leave enough room that thousands of producers can access the platforms they need.

The degree of access those individual users should get is an ongoing conversation.

It’s “making sure that people who use John Deere systems have the right access, but not more access than they need,” said Heather Schladt, Deere’s engineering manager for identity and access management, in one of the brand’s digital information posts.

“It’s a delicate balance between security and usability. We’re focused on ease of use and efficiency of systems and processes through automation and intelligence.”

Another aspect of that balancing act lands squarely in the right to repair debate. Again, the question is, how much access is enough?

Brands have so far refused to grant owners the right to delve deeply into a machine’s central processing unit (CPU), insisting that’s off limits. Right to repair advocates, on the other hand, insist owners should be entitled to do anything they want with a machine they bought and paid for, and that includes making modifications.

Many producers have become frustrated with breakdowns that required only a simple fix, but they couldn’t access enough of the on-board computer to make any corrections or diagnose the problem. Some brands, such as John Deere, have promised to permit more access to some systems to help prevent those types of problems.

Industry is also eyeing the risk inherent when granting unfettered access to complex software that controls a modern machine. It’s a growing concern as machines evolve toward realistic autonomous operation.

“Farmers, producers are used to being able to do what they need to (to keep going),” said cybersecurity expert Brennan Schmidt, a principle of ALEUS Consulting Group. “If they need to use baler twine and duct tape, they will. But now, there’s a lot of technology that’s not in their domain. They want to get hands-on with the tech.

“As a complexity to that, if you’re doing the equivalent of duct tape and baler twine in software, now there’s something you accidentally did and changed and all of a sudden the machine isn’t working. We can now see how manufacturers are not so eager to support that.”

With unrestricted access to all the software in a machine’s CPU and anyone, regardless of knowledge level, able to modify it, could that cause general loss of confidence in the integrity of onboard digital systems? Would that affect the used equipment market in a significant way? Could hackers gain access to a brand’s online system?

Schmidt says he believes manufacturers will eventually have to accept that the pressure to permit more user access to machine digital systems isn’t going to go away. Being proactive may be the key to a solution.

“The next question becomes, how do we strike the right balance?” he said. “We pave the way to say to folks, ‘here’s what you can make modifications to; here’s how you do it and how to do it safely.’

“I think this is a great opportunity for industry to get plugged into manufacturers and start asking those questions, and flip the question from, ‘how do we prevent tinkering, potentially impacting a million dollar-plus machine?’ to ‘what can you as a manufacturer do so I (a producer) can do my business and start linking things up safely?’”

Schmidt believes the brand that eventually grants the best controlled access to digital machine systems may gain significant marketing advantage. That would accommodate the growing demand for more control over machine operations by a new generation of producers who are becoming increasingly tech savvy.

The post Is the right to repair farm equipment a cybersecurity problem? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Last Thursday, Federated Co-operatives Ltd. posted on X that it was “experiencing a cybersecurity incident” that was affecting some internal and customer-facing systems at cardlock and retail Co-op locations. It had shut down some systems as a precaution and had brought in experts, the company added.

Gas bars were relatively unaffected.

Some Co-op grocery inventories were affected by the incident.

“We are prioritizing key grocery items and consumer goods for delivery to local Co-ops,” Federated Co-op said on X yesterday.

There is no evidence customer data has been compromised, the company said.

The post Federated Co-op cardlocks “fully operational” company says appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Brian Osterndorff, chair of the board of the Canadian Equipment Dealers Association, and president and CEO of Robert’s Farm Equipment, a seven-store group in Ontario, said on June 26 that they had just been informed that they could use the system again.

Tech firm CDK’s software was taken offline last week after a cyberattack by the BlackSuit ransomware group. CDK is being asked to pay tens of millions of dollars by the hackers. Reuters reported yesterday that the company expected dealers to be offline until at least June 30, but some dealers had functionality returned on June 26.

CDK provides business management software to dealers of all makes of farm equipment, so major dealers of John Deere, CNH and are working without digital systems across the country. CDK is also the leading provider of management software to automobile dealers and thousands of those dealerships are offline.

CDK says it has 15,000 North American dealers on its system.

Wawanesa, Man. farmer Jeff Elder said he was able to get what he needed on a recent parts run to the Rocky Mountain Equipment dealership in Brandon, however staff were relying on memory to find parts or looking them up on their phones.

“They had resorted to writing down orders on paper,” said Elder via text. “He couldn’t invoice me and said I would receive an invoice by email whenever they could get that done.”

Rocky Mountain Equipment declined to comment.

“Everything is being done manually,” said John Schmeiser, President of the North American Equipment Dealers Association (NAEDA) Canada. “You can just imagine the amount of time that our dealerships are spending on manual processes.”

Parts are tracked and managed through digital inventory systems.

“We have to actually know where the part is, in, in a bin, to go out and find it and fulfill that customer’s order without using our computer system to tell us where it is or how many that we have on order.”

Invoicing also has to be manual, said Schmeiser.

Osterndorff said that looking up parts, connecting parts to work orders and completing sales couldn’t be accomplished using their digital system and staff had to do the work manually.

Farmers are spraying and preparing combines for harvest so dealers continue to work as best they can.

“We can’t shut down the business, we have to take care of the customer,” Schmeiser said. “Dealers are really managing through this as best as they possibly can.”

Osterndorff says they have a team of people coming to dig out from the past week’s paperwork and get that information into the digital system.

He says they’ve learned that dealerships can continue to function, “but I think it’s just increased awareness right now of the vulnerability that we all are all have, and the effect that it has in our business.”

Schmeiser said the situation will be a wake-up call for the industry and will place even more emphasis on cyber security.

“I think as an industry as a whole, this whole situation is going to be looked at, at every sector, from the manufacturer point of view and the equipment dealer,” he said.

“We’re asking our customers or farm customers to be a little bit patient with our dealers, as we work through this problem. This is this is an issue that is not only frustrating for our equipment dealers, but can be frustrating for our customers as well.”

—Updated June 27 – adds John Schmeiser’s title, organization.

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“This is certainly completely disruptive to our equipment dealers that are using the CDK platform,” said John Schmeiser, president of the North American Equipment Dealers Association, Canada.

Tech firm CDK’s software was taken offline last week after a cyberattack by the BlackSuit ransomware group. CDK is being asked to pay tens of millions of dollars by the hackers. Reuters reports that the company expects dealers to be offline until at least June 30.

CDK provides business management software to dealers of all makes of farm equipment, so major dealers of John Deere, CNH and are working without digital systems across the country. CDK is also the leading provider of management software to automobile dealers and thousands of those dealerships are offline.

CDK says it has 15,000 North American dealers on its system.

Wawanesa, Man. farmer Jeff Elder said he was able to get the parts he needed at a Rocky Mountain Equipment dealership in Brandon, however staff were relying on memory to find parts or looking them up on their phones.

“They had resorted to writing down orders on paper,” said Elder via text. “He couldn’t invoice me and said I would receive an invoice by email whenever they could get that done.”

Rocky Mountain Equipment declined to comment.

“Everything is being done manually,” said Schmeiser. “You can just imagine the amount of time that our dealerships are spending on manual processes.”

Parts are tracked and managed through digital inventory systems.

“We have to actually know where the part is, in, in a bin, to go out and find it and fulfill that customer’s order without using our computer system to tell us where it is or how many that we have on order.”

Invoicing also has to be manual, said Schmeiser.

Equipment can be sold, but the process is manual and inventory isn’t available on a computer system. Tracking orders is also challenging.

Farmers are spraying and preparing combines for harvest so dealers continue to work as best they can.

“We can’t shut down the business, we have to take care of the customer,” Schmeiser said. “Dealers are really managing through this as best as they possibly can.”

Schmeiser said the situation will be a wake up call for the industry and will place even more emphasis on cyber security.

“I think as an industry as a whole, this whole situation is going to be looked at, at every sector, from the manufacturer point of view and the equipment dealer,” he said.

“We’re asking our customers or farm customers to be a little bit patient with our dealers, as we work through this problem. This is this is an issue that is not only frustrating for our equipment dealers, but can be frustrating for our customers as well.”

—Headline updated June 26.

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As reporter Janelle Rudolph notes in our front-page story in the May 30 issue of the Co-operator, Canadian producers, agribusinesses and farm groups have all felt the sting of a cyberattack within the past few years.

Technology and digital agriculture can reshape the industry. Farming has never been more data-rich and farmers have never had greater capacity to understand their farm on a granular level and shift operations accordingly.

But every advancement has a downside, and adopting innovation is not only about maximizing the benefits. It’s also about guarding against the dangers.

Greater cyber vulnerability is part of the price we pay for technological sophistication. Knowing how to guard against it becomes more important as farmers or agribusinesses invest in new technology.

Ensuring the defences match the rate of technological advancement has been a struggle for every industry, including agriculture, as hackers and scammers get smarter. Most of us — farmer, business owner or member of the public — have no idea who all has our data or where our data is housed, making it difficult to protect.

In March, the University of Winnipeg announced its systems had been breached. Years worth of personal information, including social insurance numbers of students, staff and graduates, was compromised. I’m sure many victims of that breach didn’t think a university they attended a decade ago was a big cybersecurity threat for them.

Artificial intelligence will make it harder to keep pace. Technology always moves quickly. With AI, it’s going to move at light speed.

AI is a double-edged knife for the cybersecurity world, as investment banking firm Morgan Stanley highlighted in a 2023 article posted to its website. Hackers and the experts trying to foil hackers are all using it.

For the good guys, AI’s abilities at large-scale data crunching and pattern recognition make it better able to identify attacks, flag phishing emails, mimic social engineering attacks, “which help security teams spot potential vulnerabilities before cybercriminals exploit them,” and help cybersecurity teams react more quickly to an issue. It allows malware to be more quickly contained, limiting damage, the article noted.

“Additionally, AI has the potential to be a game-changing tool in penetration testing — intentionally probing the defenses of software and networks to identify weaknesses.”

That same computing power can turn cybersecurity cracks into gaping holes. Hackers and scammers are using AI to improve their algorithms for guessing passwords, poison data used by the target system’s own AI and make more convincing scam messages, the article warned.

Last year, reports spread about grandparent scams, in which scammers used AI to clone the voice of a loved one to entice money out of victims.

Earlier this year, I argued that capturing the substantial promise of AI to agriculture would require “more technical know-how to match the more technical tools.”

The same goes for cybersecurity.

As Rudolph notes, farmers are well versed in the tools, programs and practices they need to manage every other risk they encounter on the farm. It’s time to add digital risk management to the list.

The post Editorial: Do you know your cybersecurity risk? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

To prevent a breach: Take a comprehensive inventory of all technology and identify the most important and potentially vulnerable pieces.

Use unique, solid passwords, enable multi-factor authentication where possible and consider using a password manager program.

Limit farm system and sensitive information access to essential personnel.

Educate the team to recognize cyber threats like unauthorized access to feeding systems.

Conduct routine audits and simulations with security specialists and partner with trusted companies with strong cybersecurity measures before sharing data.

Use updated systems and an encrypted Virtual Private Network to separate home and farm business access. Keep the farm network inaccessible to guests and suppliers.

Engage with cybersecurity professionals for assistance and use automated and remote monitoring systems.

Always back up information to external drives with no internet access and secure clouds and maintain detailed records of communications/transactions to identify discrepancies. Schmidt added that storing an external hard drive in a separate location, away from the farm, can keep information safe in case of an emergency such as a flood or fire.

During a breach: Remain calm and immediately report the incident to your cybersecurity service provider. It will advise on next steps.

Attempt to determine the scope and impact of the breach.

Do not negotiate with hackers directly. Leave that to professionals, who will negotiate for lower ransoms if necessary.

Never pay a digital currency ransom with your virtual wallet. Let the professionals handle that if payment is necessary.

After a breach: Monitor all systems to ensure they are safe and meet security standards.

Identify and address system vulnerabilities to stave off future breaches.

The evolution of cybersecurity is ongoing; keep up to date on current threats and educate employees on changes.

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