A critically important consideration for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is how to address cyber risks to safeguard customer data and/or critical business operations.  A return on investment analysis, alone, can build a strong case for making cyber protection a corporate priority.  However, how organizations approach this challenge varies widely.  It is imperative that cyber spending be balanced with other business risks to ensure that organizations are effective stewards of corporate resources.

In response to the increased use of offsite and offline backups, cybercriminals adapted and developed a new approach to conducting ransomware attacks during 2020. Known as double extortion, some cybercriminals are first engaging in data exfiltration before encrypting an organization’s systems. To make matters worse, third-party targeting and the increased use of remote work have increased organization’s risk of being affected by double extortion attacks going into 2021.

As the AG & CE industry has added more complicated devices and sensitive data on organizational networks, it has drawn more attention from cybercriminals who want to use these resources to extort, disrupt, and attack your organization. The direct costs of paying ransoms and restoring systems are not the only costs AG & CE organizations face when sustaining ransomware attacks, however, what can be more costly are indirect losses.

For years cybersecurity initiatives have struggled to gain traction within the agriculture and construction equipment (AG/CE) industry when compared to other industries, such as the healthcare or financial industries. This predicament has quickly put the sector at risk. As AG/CE organizations are relying more heavily on technology to compete, cybercriminals are taking notice. As a result, protecting your technology and data is more crucial now than it’s ever been.

With the recent deployment of a vaccine comes the promise of a post-COVID economy in the near future. While the health threat of COVID-19 may dissipate, the pandemic will have a lasting impact across most industries. The cyber trends and threats that arose in 2020 are expected to continue through 2021, however, new threats are sure to arise. Based on our current course, these are four cyber trends and threats that are likely to have the most considerable impact on the AG/CE industry, amongst others, in 2021 and beyond.

There is an actual war being waged every day against your company and its data. The target is your intellectual property, financial information, and/or holding your data/systems hostage. On this digital battlefield, it is critical for companies of all sizes to understand what digital assets they possess, how those assets are configured, and how those systems and processes are being safeguarded.

Organizations must understand the calculated and patient nature of sophisticated cyberattacks. Cybercriminals gather and analyze open-source information to identify ways to access your network even before probing your organization. To combat this level of preparation, extensive preparation is required from your organization.

The exposure of 10 million people’s information is immense, but what’s concerning is the excessive storage of data, which allowed this exposure to be so extensive. Organizations need to be aware of the information they collect from their users and ask themselves why they need this data and how long they are holding onto it. Rule of thumb: If you don’t need the data, don’t hold onto it.

One way or another, organizations end up paying for a loose patch schedule or continuing to expose vulnerabilities. Implementing a proactive cybersecurity program reduces the attack surface and improves a company’s risk posture. Actively addressing open vulnerabilities in your organization provides Executives and Stakeholders peace of mind by providing a level of cyber certainty by controlling what you can control, which is a comprehensive patch management program.