Assessing the Role of Cyberbiosecurity in Agriculture: A Case Study

Abstract

Agriculture has adopted the use of smart technology to help meet growing food demands. This increased automation and associated connectivity increases the risk of farms being targeted by cyber-attacks. Increasing frequency of cybersecurity breaches in many industries illustrates the need for securing our food supply chain. The uniqueness of biological data, the complexity of integration across the food and agricultural system, and the importance of this system to the U.S. bioeconomy and public welfare suggests an urgency as well as unique challenges that are not common across all industries. To identify and address the gaps in awareness and knowledge as well as encourage collaborations, Virginia Tech hosted a virtual workshop consisting of professionals from agriculture, cybersecurity, government, and academia. During the workshop, thought leaders and influencers discussed 1) common food and agricultural system challenges, scenarios, outcomes and risks to various sectors of the system; 2) cyberbiosecurity strategies for the system, gaps in workforce and training, and research and policy needs. The meeting sessions were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative methodology. The most common themes that emerged were challenges, solutions, viewpoints, common vocabulary. From the results of the analysis, it is evident that none of the participating groups had available cybersecurity training and resources. Participants were uncertain about future pathways for training, implementation, and outreach related to cyberbiosecurity. Recommendations include creating training and education, continued interdisciplinary collaboration, and recruiting government involvement to speed up better security practices related to cyberbiosecurity.

Digital Agriculture Security: Aspects, Threats, Mitigation Strategies, and Future Trends

“…Digital agriculture security involves a combination of strong cybersecurity and biosecurity decisions, multiple critical control points, in addition to human habits that affect the global security environment, as mentioned before. This interdisciplinary research field is known as "cyberbiosecurity", a recent concept and a growing domain dedicated to the protection of data, operations, and infrastructures in life sciences and bioeconomy, and the incorporation of cybersecurity, cyber-physical security, and biosecurity [11].…”

“…These include state-sponsored and corporate espionage malicious parties. While these facilities are equipped with specific-purpose software/hardware to achieve their goals, such as breeding techniques and genetic engineering, they also use some general-purpose technologies that have inherited vulnerabilities that could introduce biological attacks targeting both the cyber and the physical infrastructure, making them a significant biosecurity threat [11], [14]. This space is intended to protect living organisms, including plants and animals, from biological harm.…”

“…Adversaries aim to harm agricultural organisms. For example, agroterrorism, where crops, livestock, or humans are intentionally attacked [11] with viruses, bacteria, fungi, insects, etc; or spreading infectious pathogens, influenza, and so on.. 1) Cyberspace Threats: The threats related to this area are directed toward the critical data, networks, software, and services of the digital agriculture across the cyberspace. One of the most valuable assets for the digital agricultural sector is the data, making it an attractive target at any stage of its life cycle: creation, transmission, storage, or processing [10].…”

“…The cyber attack itself is not the problem, but rather the inevitable consequence of the problem, namely the inherited vulnerabilities associated with the widespread deployment of technology in agriculture. In addition, the challenge of securing the agricultural sector is complicated by the necessity of improving the defence gates in three different directions, namely cyber security, cyber-physical systems security, and biosecurity-an intersection which is referred to by the term cyberbiosecurity [11]. Furthermore, the dynamic environment of digital agriculture, introduces specific factors such as dedicated farm machinery and data, operational decisions and agricultural field conditions [4].…”

“…A couple of studies have focused on a specific technology, such as networks [7] or blockchain [8], [9]. A few approached the digital agriculture topic from a cyberbiosecurity perspective [11]. In this paper, we provide a high-level view of digital agriculture security, considering its building blocks.…”