Cybersecurity for the Agriculture sector
Hunt & Hackett has observed a discerning increase of activity of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups in the agricultural sector. There is this legendary saying on how to overcome your adversaries: 'know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated'. To know your enemy starts with gaining an understanding of your threat landscape, your adversaries’ intentions, their modus operandi, and specific attacking methods. The following sections provide a glimpse of the agriculture specific threat landscape to highlight what is going on and is followed-up by our approach on how to defend against it. The blog series which can be found at the bottom of this page provides further details of the agriculture threat landscape.
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Threat landscape
For the agriculture industry
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
Tactics, Techniques & Procedures (TTPs)
Attack tools
Agriculture | Agriculture + related | Broader focus | All known | |
---|---|---|---|---|
APTs | 84 | 116 | 286 | 483 |
TTPs | 1,452 | 2,080 | 2,770 | 3,325 |
Attack tools | 1,184 | 1,616 | 2,231 | 2,806 |
Agriculture faces more cyber threats than ever
To stay in control becomes increasingly difficult
Our home-grown threat diagnostics system has shown increasing malicious activity over the past few years in the agriculture sector. The need for innovation and chance to solve our global food challenges, has made the sector a target for cyber espionage, information theft and financial crime. This means that if you are operating in this sector, the risk of becoming the victim of a cyber-attack ranging from IP (Intellectual Property) theft to ransomware is increasing, especially if you do not have the appropriate defenses in place.
Actors and their motivation
The number of cyber attacks on the agriculture sector has increased significantly over the last few years. This chart shows which motivations are driving the various actors active in this sector.
Knowing the APT groups, their motivations and origin countries provides a solid starting point for understanding what you are up against. To get a more comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape, it is important to research, map, and document your adversaries’ intentions to their modus operandi, attack methods and attack tools, as this provides more actionable information for strenghtening your defences.
More detailed information on the threat landscape for this sector?
Our articles about the agriculture sector
From Hunt & Hackett experts
Our approach
Controlling your cybersecurity risks
In their fight against cyber attacks, our customers typically go through several stages of maturity. By ramping up their prevention, detection and incident readiness over time – and optimizing this for their actual threat landscape – they reach a point where they have developed solid resilience against targeted attacks, with only highly controlled and accepted risks remaining.
There is no simple 'fix' to become resilient against the sophisticated cyber threats of today. Without serious resources or processes for systematic security activities, protection against modern cyber threats like ransomware is just a wish. Hunt & Hackett has developed a unique threat- and sector-driven approach to cybersecurity, enabling you to work from your current situation to a highly improved and controlled situation, optimized for your specific threat landscape and context as an organisation.
Our services
Optimized for the agriculture industry
Because we use your actual threat landscape and your sector as our starting points, our services are optimised for your specific context and needs.
Managed Detection & Response (MDR)
We detect & react to attacker activity in your environment, minimizing the impact on your business.
Security Program Gap Assessment (SPGA)
We assess your current security program, threat landscape, security controls and risk.
Incident Response (IR)
We help you manage a cyber crisis and contain security incidents, breaches and cyber threats.
Breach & Attack Simulation (BAS)
We validate your security choices by simulating attacks.