Cybersecurity conversations often focus on corporate networks, ransomware, financial systems, and data breaches.
But a quieter transformation is happening across North Carolina.
Agriculture, one of the state’s most important industries, is rapidly becoming dependent on connected technologies that were never traditionally viewed through a cybersecurity lens. Irrigation systems, feed management platforms, environmental controls, equipment diagnostics, wireless sensors, operational automation, and internet-connected devices are increasingly woven into the daily operation of farms and agricultural facilities across the state.
That shift is creating both a growing vulnerability and a significant workforce opportunity.
For Wake Technical Community College cybersecurity student Joy McKenzie, the issue became impossible to ignore.
A participant in the Carolina Cyber Network’s CyberSafe Communities internship program, Joy has spent the past year examining how cybersecurity risks increasingly intersect with agriculture, rural communities, and critical infrastructure.
Her perspective comes from both personal and professional experience.
Joy lives in rural North Carolina, has prior involvement with FFA, lived on a dairy farm during high school, and maintains close ties to agricultural operations today. Before transitioning into cybersecurity, she worked in heavily regulated industries including fintech, employer services, and property management, environments where governance, operational trust, compliance, and risk management were central to daily work.
As connected technologies continue moving into agricultural environments, Joy believes many producers are being placed in difficult positions: expected to adopt digital tools without receiving practical cybersecurity guidance that fits the realities of agricultural operations.
“Farmers use the tools available to them, and if a device works when they take it out of the box, they put it to use,” Joy explained during a recent discussion about agricultural cybersecurity.
The challenge is not resistance to technology.
In many cases, producers are embracing automation because operational efficiency matters. Time matters. Labor matters. Weather matters.
But cybersecurity often remains outside the operational conversation.
“The issue is that attackers know those default settings. They scan for them,” Joy said. “If a device is still using the factory login, it becomes an easy entry point into systems that control irrigation, feed, ventilation, or equipment functions.”
As operational technology and internet-connected systems continue expanding across agriculture, the implications move beyond data loss alone. A compromised system can directly affect crops, livestock operations, production schedules, environmental controls, logistics, and business continuity.
“A cyber incident can disrupt an operation as quickly as a storm or a market shift,” Joy wrote in a recent reflection on the subject.
Those realities are beginning to reshape how workforce leaders, educators, and cybersecurity organizations think about future talent development.
Programs like the CyberSafe Communities initiative are exposing students to operational environments where cybersecurity must be communicated in practical, understandable ways to organizations that may not have dedicated security teams or deep technical resources.
For Joy, one of the most important lessons from the experience was learning how to frame cybersecurity in operational language rather than technical terminology.
“We needed to talk to them in a way that they could understand and not only that they could understand, but making it relevant to them,” she said.
That communication gap may become increasingly important as cybersecurity expands into sectors where operational uptime, physical systems, logistics, and infrastructure resilience are tightly connected.
The issue also highlights a broader workforce challenge.
Emerging sectors such as agricultural cybersecurity may require professionals who can bridge technology, operations, communication, governance, and community engagement rather than focusing exclusively on highly specialized technical roles.
Joy represents part of that evolving workforce pipeline. As an adult learner and second-career student, she believes professional experience and operational perspective should play a larger role in how organizations evaluate cybersecurity talent.
“There are so many women at Wake Tech right now going into cybersecurity,” Joy said. “Some are coming from other careers. Some have extensive life and professional experience. Companies should see the value in that.”
Her work has already gained attention. In addition to earning Dean’s List recognition at Wake Tech, Joy recently received third-place recognition during the student poster competition at the CCN Workforce Development Workshop hosted by North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Her presentation focused on cybersecurity vulnerabilities tied to modern agricultural systems and rural infrastructure.
Looking ahead, Joy hopes to continue building experience in governance, risk, and compliance while exploring opportunities connected to agricultural cybersecurity and rural resilience efforts across North Carolina.
“I want to be part of the effort to secure agricultural infrastructure in North Carolina,” she wrote. “I want to help bring attention to the risks, the gaps, and the opportunities to strengthen the systems that support the people who keep our food supply running.”
As North Carolina continues modernizing critical industries, the intersection of agriculture, operational technology, and cybersecurity may become one of the state’s most important emerging workforce and resilience conversations.
