Cybersecurity in the Russian agro-industrial complex: tools, cases, incidents

The relevance of this study stems from the rapid digitalisation of Russia’s agro-industrial complex and the growing dependence of the sector on information systems, industrial control systems and governmental traceability platforms. Cyber incidents in agriculture are no longer a purely IT issue: recent attacks against large agribusiness groups, logistics hubs, processing plants and state information systems have affected physical production, cold-chain infrastructure and export flows. These cases demonstrate a shift of cyber risks from data confidentiality to operational resilience and food security. The purpose of the paper is to systematise the cyber-threat landscape for the Russian agro-industrial complex, to describe dominant attack scenarios, and to analyse the cybersecurity tools and risk-management standards used in practice, assessing their suitability for sector-specific conditions. Methodologically, the research relies on qualitative analysis of scientific literature on agricultural cybersecurity and digital agriculture, international industry reports on cyber threats to the food and agriculture sector, Russian media and industry case studies of cyberattacks, and official regulatory documents governing the protection of critical information infrastructure and governmental information systems. The novelty of the paper lies in the integrated linkage of three analytical levels: global statistics on attacks against the food and agriculture sector, publicly reported Russian incidents in agro-industrial chains, and real-world implementations of sector-specific cybersecurity solutions. The study proposes a structured matrix connecting incident types along the “farm – processing – logistics – control and traceability” chain with clusters of security tools (SOC/SIEM, EDR/XDR, OT/IoT security, IRP/SOAR, DLP/DCAP) and risk-management frameworks (ISO/IEC 27001, NIST CSF 2.0, Russian critical-infrastructure regulations). As a result, an industry-oriented “minimal standard” of cyber-resilience is outlined that reflects the specificity of Russian agribusiness and state digital platforms.