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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.

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.

The life sciences now interface broadly with information technology (IT) and cybersecurity. This convergence is a key driver in the explosion of biotechnology research and its industrial applications in health care, agriculture, manufacturing, automation, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology. As the information and handling mechanisms for biological materials have become increasingly digitized, many market sectors are now vulnerable to threats at the digital interface. This growing landscape will be addressed by cyberbiosecurity, the emerging field at the convergence of both the life sciences and IT disciplines. This manuscript summarizes the current cyberbiosecurity landscape, identifies existing vulnerabilities, and calls for formalized collaboration across a swath of disciplines to develop frameworks for early response systems to anticipate, identify, and mitigate threats in this emerging domain.

Our national data and infrastructure security issues affecting the "bioeconomy" are evolving rapidly. Simultaneously, the conversation about cyber security of the U.S. food and agricultural system (cyber biosecurity) is incomplete and disjointed. The food and agricultural production sectors influence over 20% of the nation's economy ($ 6.7T) and 15% of U.S. employment (43.3M jobs). The food and agricultural sectors are immensely diverse and they require advanced technologies and efficiencies that rely on computer technologies, big data, cloud-based data storage, and internet accessibility. There is a critical need to safeguard the cyber biosecurity of our bio economy, but currently protections are minimal and do not broadly exist across the food and agricultural system. Using the food safetymanagement Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point systemconcept as an introductory point of reference, we identify important features in broad food and agricultural production and food systems: dairy, food animals, row crops, fruits and vegetables, and environmental resources (water). This analysis explores the relevant concepts of cyber biosecurity from food production to the end product user (such as the consumer) and considers the integration of diverse transportation, supplier, and retailer networks. We describe common challenges and unique barriers across these systems and recommend solutions to advance the role of cyber biosecurity in the food and agricultural sectors.

Cyberbiosecurity is being proposed as a formal new enterprise which encompasses cybersecurity, cyber-physical security and biosecurity as applied to biological and biomedical-based systems. In recent years, an array of important meetings and public discussions, commentaries and publications have occurred that highlight numerous vulnerabilities. While necessary first steps, they do not provide a systematized structure for effectively promoting communication, education and training, elucidation and prioritization for analysis, research, development, test and evaluation and implementation of scientific, technological, standards of practice, policy, or even regulatory or legal considerations for protecting the bioeconomy. Further, experts in biosecurity and cybersecurity are generally not aware of each other's domains, expertise, perspectives, priorities, or where mutually supported opportunities exist for which positive outcomes could result. Creating, promoting and advancing a new discipline can assist with formal, beneficial and continuing engagements. Recent key activities and publications that inform the creation of Cyberbiosecurity are briefly reviewed, as is the expansion of Cyberbiosecurity to include biomanufacturmg which is supported by a rigorous analysis of a biomanufacturmg facility. Recommendations are provided to initialize Cyberbiosecurity and place it on a trajectory to establish a structured and sustainable discipline, forum and enterprise.

The Human Interoperability (HI) initiative is intended to improve the responsiveness, efficiency, and effectiveness of organizations when they partner externally or internally. This document reports findings from initial research, led by OSD NII, to explore the discipline and dimensions of HI. The goals of the research team were to develop theory concerning HI, capture and analyze initial evidence of barriers to organizational collaboration, and to outline objectives for future research., Prepared in collaboration with Aptima, Inc., Woburn, MA. The original document contains color images.

The Human Interoperability (HI) initiative is intended to improve the responsiveness, efficiency, and effectiveness of organizations when they partner externally or internally. This document reports findings from initial research, led by OSD NII, to explore the discipline and dimensions of HI. The goals of the research team were to develop theory concerning HI, capture and analyze initial evidence of barriers to organizational collaboration, and to outline objectives for future research., Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

These briefing slides examines the need for, the potential of, and the steps involved in applying intelligent software, called Intelligent Agents (IA), to the problem of anticipating terrorist acts. Two areas in which IAs could play a significant role are in the development and maintenance of a real-time picture of terrorist activity, and in predicting potential occurrences of terrorist acts sufficiently well in advance so that they can be prevented. An examination of situation indicates the fragmented nature of the current flow of intelligence data from the collecting organizations, through the processing of the data into information, to the organizations designated to take action on it. Terrorism crosses operational and mission boundaries of the organizations established to counter it, such as the CIA, U.S. Customs Service, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, FBI, and Department of Defense. Crime fighting organizations are reactive, crime investigation, and prosecution oriented, whereas terrorism requires a predictive, anticipatory, and preventative orientation. The multitude of data sources, coupled with the amount of data available to be collected can lead to information overload. These slides describe a way forward that includes both an approach to developing a data collection, data analysis, and information distribution plan, and a concept for utilizing intelligent agents to process the data collected into actionable information. The approach is illustrated by applying it to one possible means for terrorists to bring weapons into the United States, which is to hide them in a shipping container. About 17,000 shipping containers arrive in this country each day, only a small percentage of which can be searched. Thus, identifying the best containers to search for weapons or explosive materials is a complex task. This case study shows how IAs can be used to integrate and analyze data from key organizations to accomplish this task. (19 refs.), The original document contains color images.