THE wool market has had an interesting start to the year, with China's coronavirus chaos creating uncertainly about buyer demand and the forced cancellation of wool sales following a ransomware cyber attack on the industry's main software provider Talman.
More than three-quarters of the wool industry in Australia and across the Tasman uses Talman software for tasks such as sale cataloguing and valuations.
The cyber attack is a reminder of how reliant our entire lives are on technology.
There are huge benefits of living in today's digital world. It has revolutionised every aspect of our lives - including how we communicate, how we do business and how we learn. We are more connected with what's happening on the other side of the globe than ever before.
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But this can be a double-edged sword, as our reliance on modern technology leaves us vulnerable when things go wrong. The flow-on effects of technological failure - be it a machine giving up the ghost, a computer crash or a malicious software attack - are often much larger than anyone could have predicted.
Hackers are another unfortunate side effect of our internet-driven world. Some launch cyber attacks in search of financial gain, while others seem to simply delight in disrupting the lives of others.
The cancellation of the country's wool sales due to such malicious activity must be a lesson to us all. Be it online banking, web-based livestock sales or platforms such as One Biosecurity or WoolQ - all must be protected by the best antivirus and malware protection available.
We cannot be too careful.
The recent events also create the question of how vulnerable our individual farming operations could be in the future, as more and more devices on-farm become connected through the Internet of Things.
I'll be keen to see the results from a new research project - run through the University of Newcastle - examining how the IoT is leaving farms and agribusiness vulnerable to a serious cyber security breach.
Sure, your average trough sensor, moisture probe or drone doesn't seem like an obvious target for hackers, but who knows what's possible?
Modern technology has opened up unimaginable opportunities for agriculture, but it also presents new threats that we must be aware of.
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