Cybercriminals are attacking agriculture, says Greg Gatzke, founder of ZAG Technical Services.
“Basically everyone in the nation — large companies, small companies," the longtime cybersecurity and agriculture expert said in Season 4, Episode 9 of the "Tip of the Iceberg Podcast."
"There are also opportunities for technology within ag," Gatzke continued. "It’s becoming a new farming input. It can help us reduce waste, increase production, reduce labor requirements. Technology and ag have never been more aligned more than today.”
What’s going to happen with cybersecurity, labor, data and all the company stressors of today and in the future?
Despite being a tech guy, Gatzke has a farming background. His family grew lettuce and other vegetables in Wisconsin in 1970s and 1980s, but when many small farms went out of business at that time, they did too. Gatzke ended up in Silicon Valley because he loved tech.
But he discovered there was just something missing. Around 2004 or so, he became involved in a Salinas-area company and worked with people in agriculture.
"That’s the world I knew and loved," he said. And they went full force into it by 2006.
"People in Silicon Valley, they spend their life trying to figure out how to get someone to spend a second-and-a-half extra on an app, and that is a lifetime to them, right? And we’re helping feed America. It just means so much more," Gatzke said. "It just resonates so much stronger with people that we work with and candidates that we bring in. It’s much more meaningful."
Everyone knows the stressors on agriculture, such as labor and government initiatives.
"Technology can answer almost every problem we have at some level. Let’s face it. Technology has always been in some part of agriculture, in the 1950s, in the 1800s," he said. "We’re just now embracing modern-day technology to do the same things that agriculture has always done.
"Technology and ag have never been more aligned more than today."
Cyberattacks
When a company is cyberattacked, operations can shut down for 10-14 days, and then the C-suite sees the effect that has on business, he said.
"For a company that can recover in 24 hours, it becomes more of a minor hit than this full-scale disaster," he said. "When you frame security in terms of risk mitigation, then it is absolutely the board’s job to ensure that it is being done."
"Security is a competitive advantage because of that. We all know in football [that] defense wins championships," Gatzke said. "It’s no different in IT."
Modern tech offers opportunities to reduce labor, lower waste, increase operational production. Just think of all the requirements that are being put on farmers today that weren’t in the past, like labor-time recording and traceability.
"All these huge things require technology to achieve," he said.