Don’t Feed the Attackers
Cyber attackers are always looking for an opening. A weak password. An unprotected account. A convincing phishing email. A system that hasn’t been updated.
Don’t give them one.
This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the Food and Ag-ISAC is focusing on four cybersecurity fundamentals that can help organizations across the food and agriculture sector reduce risk, protect operations, and make life harder for attackers.
The fundamentals may be simple. Their impact isn’t.
Defend Better. Defend Together.
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Don’t Feed the Attackers
Cybersecurity Fundamentals That Still Matter & Why
October 28, 2026 | 3:00 PM ET
Cyber threats continue to evolve, but attackers still rely on many of the same opportunities: compromised credentials, phishing, unpatched vulnerabilities, and weak access controls.
Join the Food and Ag-ISAC for a Cybersecurity Awareness Month conversation about the fundamentals that still matter, why attackers keep exploiting them, and what organizations can do to strengthen their defenses.
We’ll start with the basics — and then go beyond them.
Four Ways to Stop Feeding the Attackers
Cybersecurity doesn’t always require complicated technology or massive investments. Some of the most effective defenses start with getting the fundamentals right — and consistently applying them across your organization.
Throughout October, we’ll explore four areas where organizations and individuals can take practical steps to reduce opportunities for attackers.
Strong Passwords & Passkeys
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Stop Serving Up Easy Credentials.
Weak and reused passwords give attackers exactly what they’re looking for.
Use long, unique passwords, take advantage of password managers, and use passkeys when available to make stolen or guessed credentials far less useful.
Beyond the Fundamentals → Explore phishing-resistant authentication, passwordless approaches, credential monitoring, and stronger identity controls that reduce the risk associated with compromised credentials.
Put Another Layer Between Attackers and Your Accounts.
A password shouldn’t be the only thing protecting access to your systems.
Turning on multi-factor authentication adds another layer attackers have to overcome—even when a password has already been compromised.
Beyond the Fundamentals → Explore phishing-resistant MFA, stronger authentication methods, privileged access controls, and identity protections that make account takeover significantly more difficult.
Phishing Scams
Patch and Update
Don’t Take the Bait.
Attackers know people are often the fastest way into an organization.
Phishing emails, malicious links, fake login pages, QR codes, text messages, and social engineering are designed to get someone to click, respond, download, or hand over information.
Slow down. Verify unusual requests. And when something looks suspicious, report it.
Beyond the Fundamentals → Explore email authentication, phishing-resistant identity controls, employee reporting programs, domain monitoring, and techniques for identifying increasingly sophisticated social engineering campaigns.
Don’t Leave Known Openings on the Menu.
Attackers regularly exploit vulnerabilities that already have fixes available.
Keeping operating systems, applications, devices, and infrastructure updated helps close known security gaps before attackers can take advantage of them.
Enable automatic updates where appropriate, prioritize critical vulnerabilities, and know which systems matter most to your operations.
Beyond the Fundamentals → Explore vulnerability prioritization, asset management, exposure management, compensating controls, and approaches for patching operational technology and other systems where downtime isn’t simple.
RESOURCES YOU CAN USE & SHARE
Cybersecurity gets stronger when good information travels. Explore practical resources designed to help you strengthen your organization’s defenses—and give employees, partners, suppliers, customers, and peers information they can use to do the same.
Use them. Share them. Help strengthen the entire food and agriculture community.
Food and Agriculture Cybersecurity Guide for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
Proactive defense is our industry's greatest protection against digital pests. Cyber threats targeting the food and agriculture sector are evolving faster than ever, and standard security measures no longer stand up to modern operational risks.
To help smaller growers, processors, distributors, and retailers stay resilient and secure, the Food and Ag-ISAC has published the Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Cybersecurity Guide — your practical blueprint featuring 10 essential security practices designed to protect your organization without breaking the bank.
State of the Threat: Food and Agriculture Sector Cyber Trends
While ransomware volume soars and nation-state actors quietly target operational technology, the food and agriculture sector faces a pivotal moment in 2026. Automated tools and AI-driven exploits are giving adversaries unprecedented speed, making early detection and sector-wide visibility critical.
The Food and Ag-ISAC’s latest report, State of the Threat: Food and Agriculture Sector Cyber Trends, breaks down the six major forces reshaping risk across our supply chain — from deceptive ClickFix campaigns and typosquatting domain fraud to practical, risk-informed patch management strategies.
2025 Food and Agriculture Sector Cyber Threat Report
Outsmarting modern cyber adversaries requires focus, not just more alerts. To help teams separate critical risks from everyday noise, the Food and Ag-ISAC leveraged the Predictive Adversary Scoring System (PASS) to evaluate over 330 threat groups targeting our sector in 2025.
The resulting 2025 Food and Agriculture Cyber Threat Report exposes the 72 actors actively targeting our industry. It maps where these threats originate, dissects the top 10 tactics threat actors use to target the sector — from living-off-the-land techniques to supply chain compromises — and outlines concrete mitigations to starve these threats before they disrupt your operations.
Farm-to-Table Ransomware Realities: Exploring the 2025 Ransomware Landscape and Insights for 2026
When ransomware hits a just-in-time supply chain, the impact stretches far past the IT department — it means spoiled shipments, stalled transport, and frozen distribution networks.
Drawing from a tracking database of over 15,000 global incidents, Farm to Table Ransomware Realities breaks down the cyber extortion methods targeting the food and agriculture sector. Inside, we examine the factors behind the recent surge in total ransomware volume, profile the top five strains driving nearly half of all sector attacks, and detail the primary software vulnerabilities actively being exploited today.
Read Farm to Table Ransomware Realities
Built by Industry for Industry.
Join the Food and Ag-ISAC.
No organization sees the entire threat landscape on its own.
The Food and Ag-ISAC brings organizations across the sector together to share cyber threat information, operational insights, lessons learned, and defensive practices in a trusted community.
When one organization sees something and shares it, others can take action before the same threat reaches them.
Attackers share information with each other.
Defenders should too.
