Work

2023 cyberbiosecurity summit underscores challenges associated with cybersecurity and the rapidly growing bioeconomy

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: The 2 November 2023 Cyberbiosecurity Summit at Georgia Tech Research Institute’s (GTRI) headquarters in Atlanta united cybersecurity and biotechnology stakeholders to address safeguarding of bio-based industries. Goals included identifying cyberbiosecurity vulnerabilities and establishing prevention best practices for emerging biotech hardware, software, data and bio-based systems. The Summit highlighted risks and explored mitigation strategies for a safer bioeconomy. Key takeaways include: (1) as genome databases proliferate globally, it becomes more likely that these databases will become targets for cyberbiosecurity attacks; (2) the biotech community should not view cybersecurity as an impediment to research, but rather as a national security and global health imperative for proactive investment and workforce training; (3) the bioeconomy depends on a vulnerable supply chain for software; and (4) mapping of a biological attack surface, inspired by traditional cybersecurity assessments, would facilitate identification of vulnerabilities of cyber-bio-physical systems and the development of protective measures for the bioeconomy.

Source: Global Security Health Science and Policy

DOI: 10.1080/23779497.2024.2401164

Authors: Nicholas Guise, David Pattie, Kenneth B. Yeh, Kemper Talley, Rachel Fennell Fezzie

Institutions: Georgia Tech Research Institute, MRIGlobal, RTX (United States)

Language: English

Topic: Information and Cyber Security

Subfield: Information Systems

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $821

Funders: Research Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Los Alamos National Laboratory