Imagine a farm customer coming into your dealership with the receipt for a $35,000 equipment purchase wondering when it will be delivered, and there being no record of it in the company’s database.

Losing a five-figure proof of purchase would seem to be an unlikely oversight for any size operation, but resolving an administrative glitch is often easier and far less stressful or damaging than a nefarious alternative — data hacking and theft.

This real-life scenario was how a major-line farm equipment dealership — and its customer — realized it had been victimized by a complex heist of the company’s servers.

It’s increasingly common for dealers to be on the receiving end of a phishing or ransomware scam, often resulting in a concerned call to an IT security company to limit damage to the dealership’s reputation and finances.

This can be a messy and costly process. But it doesn’t have to be. In today’s Precision Farming Dealer podcast we assembled 3 experts for a roundtable discussion on the realities of cyber threats (and it’s not just a big dealer problem), the importance of aligning what’s most valuable with where you are most vulnerable and implementing an action plan for protection.

Included in the conversation were Jason Ballard, IT director with Sedona Technologies, a software consulting company in Moline, Ill.; Wayne Selk, director of professional services at ConnectWise, a software solutions company based in Tampa, Fla., and Arlin Sorensen, founder of HTS Ag, an independent precision dealership in Harlan, Iowa, and also VP of Ecosystem Evangelism at ConnectWise.

And tune into the monthly podcast segment, brought to you by Trimble Agriculture featuring precision perspective on a range of trending ag tech topics.