Farming across Canada is becoming more digital and connected each day. While digital transformation is helping farmers gain new insights and increase efficiency, it also opens the door to unconventional attacks on our agriculture sector. Cyber threats are continuously evolving — and cyber security is becoming an increasing priority across all industries, including agriculture. The main differentiator is how prepared each sector is to handle these rising threats.

The MNP Digital Cyber Security on the Farm 2025 Report revealed that the Canadian agriculture sector is lagging behind in cyber security preparedness — leaving a vital industry vulnerable to threats. Let’s examine the gap between concern and preparedness that many Canadian farmers are experiencing and review several practical steps to help your farm boost its cyber security. 

The MNP Digital Cyber Security on the Farm 2025 Report highlighted that:

• Canadian farms are unprepared to face the increased sophistication of cyber threats. Only 16 percent consider themselves knowledgeable about cyber security, and 80 percent of farms don’t have an incident response plan.
• 82 percent of the farms surveyed for the report believe they have never experienced a cyber attack, despite nearly 50 percent of suppliers reporting otherwise.
• Only 7 percent of farmers feel very knowledgeable about cyber security.
• 64 percent of farms surveyed are concerned or very concerned about cyber security on their farms.
• 52 percent of farms surveyed said the impact of a cyber attack on their farm would be significant.

The survey results highlight an urgent need for the widespread adoption of cyber security planning and awareness training to protect Canada’s agriculture industry. These are several simple and effective steps you can take to protect your farm from cyber risks:

Many farming tools are connected to the internet — including automated irrigation systems, tractors, and livestock monitoring tools. Additionally, farm management software stores valuable data on your crop yields, financial records, and soil conditions.

Cyber attackers can easily find default passwords to gain access to your control systems and sensitive data. It is important to ensure that you change these default passwords to unique and strong passwords for each account. Additionally, implementing multi-factor authentication and a password policy for all users can help protect your farm from cyber threats.

It is crucial to develop a cyber security awareness and education training program for your employees to protect your farm from cyber threats. This program can help raise awareness about why cyber security is necessary to protect your farm’s equipment and information.

The program should cover safe online practices such as creating strong passwords, avoiding clicking on suspicious links or attachments, and only downloading software from trusted sources. It should also teach employees to recognize common cyber threats such as phishing emails, fake invoices, and malware or ransomware. While this may sound challenging, these training programs can be quickly implemented with the right partner.

A cyber incident response plan outlines what steps to take when a cyber attack occurs to minimize damages and support a quick recovery. It should clearly identify who is responsible for cyber security and include a communication plan to notify key stakeholders when a breach occurs. Ensure you have a printed copy of your cyber incident response plan in a secure location and regularly test your plan to ensure everyone knows how to respond during a cyber incident.

This response plan should also include measures to contain the cyber attack and secure your systems, such as removing infected software, scanning for malware, and patching vulnerabilities. Recovery activities may include restoring from backups, checking systems, and reporting the cyber incident if any financial or regulatory data was compromised. It is also vital to conduct a post-incident review and improve security measures after a cyber attack occurs.

Regularly updating your software, firmware, and operating systems can help protect your farm from cyber threats. Cyber criminals frequently exploit outdates software to access networks, steal data, or install ransomware.

Updates patch the vulnerabilities that cyber criminals can use to breach systems. Automatically enabling updates can help ensure that all your software, firmware, and operating systems are secure and up to date.

Regularly reviewing the systems and employees that access your network and data can help strengthen your cyber security. This can help identify suspicious activity by revealing unauthorized logins or devices connected to your farm network.

It also helps detect any unused or inactive accounts connected to your network. This helps ensure that you delete the accounts of employees who no longer work at your farm to protect your information. It also helps prevent unused accounts from being hijacked by cyber criminals and ensures employees don’t have more access privileges than required for their position.

A cyber attack may wipe out critical data, causing significant financial losses and operational disruptions. Regularly backing up your data plays a crucial role in ensuring your farm recovers from a cyber incident.

Set daily or weekly automatic backups for your critical data that is protected by strong passwords. You should aim to have three copies of your data — the original and two backups. Your backups should use two different storage types, such as an external hard drive and the cloud, with one copy stored offsite.

Additionally, it is important to ensure that your backups restore properly. Performing test restores at least once a month can ensure that your backups are working and support your peace of mind.

Bringing a cyber security partner on board can move your training program forward. However, it is important to ask the following questions to ensure that you gain the cyber security support you need to protect your farm from cyber threats:

• Do you have security certifications and an outline of your compliance with industry standards?
• How do you stay up to date with the latest cyber threats and trends?
• How complicated is the training software to set up?
• What kind of resources and support do you offer post-training?

These questions can help ensure that your partner adheres to recognized security practices and regulations. Their answers to these questions can also enable you to evaluate their commitment to continuous improvement and staying current with evolving cyber threats. It can also help you to gauge the ease of implementation and user-friendliness of their training program and understand the level of ongoing support and resources you will receive after the program is complete.

If you need help developing a cyber security training program, connect with a member of MNP Digital’s Cyber Security and Privacy team. We provide tailored cyber security and privacy strategies that put you in control while keeping your organization secure.