Cybersecurity issues need industry attention, Viva Fresh speaker says

GRAPEVINE, Texas -  Cybersecurity is an ag issue now, and that real and present threat should spark industrywide attention to the issue,  Greg Gatzke, president of Zag Technical Services, said on April 22 at the Viva Fresh Expo.

Cyber attacks are increasingly common, and the FBI on April 20 warned agriculture businesses about  ransomware attacks on agricultural cooperatives potentially timed to critical planting and harvest seasons. The attacks, the FBI said, are “disrupting operations, causing financial loss and negatively impacting the food supply chain.”

“Cyber threat actors will continue to exploit network, system and application vulnerabilities within the food and agriculture sector,” the FBI notice said.
Gatzke echoed some of the themes of FBI communication.

“We’re talking about cybersecurity because foreign hackers, foreign criminals, are coming after your businesses,” he said.

In the hour-long session, he reviewed both potential threats and the needed responses to those threats.

Gatzke likened the current cybersecurity threat now to the elevated profile that produce safety took on after the 2006 E. coli spinach outbreak.

In 2007, the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement was formed to focus on produce safety issues.

“I think we need a similar reaction with security because we need to know more about these issues,” he said.  For example,  produce operators need a forum to share when they are being attacked.

Providers can range from small to exceptionally large, with widely varying cybersecurity measures.

“What that means is any place in that chain, where the weakest link is, is going to expose the entire chain,” he said. That adds to the argument for the industry to come together on cybersecurity issues, he said.

Email phishing attacks and variations of ransomware attacks are the most common ways of being attacked, he said.

Gatzke said businesses should make it a goal never to pay cybercriminals since there is no guarantee the criminals will restore lost data.  “Just as important, you should be able to recover your data faster than the criminals can recover (the data),” he said.

Gatzke said he is engaged with a cybersecurity group called the Produce Supply Organization, which is meeting every other week to come up with minimum cybersecurity standards for the industry.

For more information on general cybersecurity measures from Zag, see this link.