Cyber security is proving a blind spot as smart farming technologies are implemented around the world, according to a Norwegian expert.
In research presented at the International Symposium on Technology and Society, Karianne Kjønas said that there is a lack of observational work looking specifically at cyber security when digital technologies are being used by farmers, despite clear risks to their livelihoods through malicious attacks.
Much of the research on cyber security in agriculture to date is either technical or theoretical, said Kjøn˚as, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. This is spite of the fact that that precision farming relies on highly connected Internet of Things technologies, which use precise information to guide decision-making on farms, so are particularly vulnerable to manipulation by outsiders.
“As the use of technological solutions in farming increases, so does the dependency, and at the same time there is a significant need on the level of individual farms to improve knowledge and cyber security,” she said.
Farmer perspectives largely absent
Research to date has highlighted state of the art options that could be used by farmers to protect network-connected agricultural technologies. For example, blockchain can help preserve privacy for farmers, she noted, while deep learning models can help detect denial of service attacks, which make networked technologies unavailable to their users.
However, she stressed that “the sheer number of technologies means that the available research is far from enough to cover all aspects,” and there is a notable lack of studies that address farmer perspectives on cyber security.
“Because there is so little research on this topic, there is not much that can be gleaned about cyber security knowledge of the farmers in general,” she said.
Bringing theory to the field
There is also a dearth of studies which touch on the practical implications of cyber-attacks for farmers and the broader agricultural supply chain, Kjønas said, which can include invalidating certification processes, affect crop prices and even manipulate information which can destroy crops. A number of studies also make generalisations about potential impacts, without considering the diversity of farming practices.
“There are a lot of opportunities for future work on cyber security in agriculture technology,” she concluded.
“The heavy use of technology and increasing dependence means that there is a lot more knowledge to obtain, both on the technology itself, and on the use of the technologies, their dependencies, and the consequences of cyber-attacks to different components or whole systems.”
