What keeps James Johnson up at night is the fear of a “one-to-many” attack, which would involve a bad actor uncovering a system vulnerability at Deere & Co. and in a nightmare scenario, take control of the company’s network of farming machinery.
Though no such dire event has occurred, if it did, this type of hacking event would erode the hard-earned trust that Deere has cultivated over a 188-year history. “Our customers trust us a lot,” says Johnson, chief information security officer at Deere since 2014. “Our executives are laser focused on making sure we do the right things with data, as well as our equipment.”
