Nature Food authors propose a land-grant university consortium to counter cyberattacks on US agriculture

The figure of more than 150 is a count of participants. The Nature Food recommendation ^[1] draws its risk picture from three regional workshops and their follow-up sessions ^[2]. The phys.org account describes the threat to American agriculture as growing ^[19] but does not report incident counts, losses or attack rates. What the workshops produced is a description of the gap. "In our discussions with ag-tech vendors, growers and state agencies, we noted a lack of clear understanding of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and a lack of platforms and tools to conduct vulnerability assessments in digital agricultural systems," said Monowar Hasan, an assistant professor at Washington State University whose lab studies cyber-physical systems security ^[5][6]. "This is primarily due to misconceptions about cyber threats and adversarial capabilities among agricultural stakeholders," he said ^[7].

The case for urgency rests on adoption. "With increased digitization of agricultural data and increased adoption of AI into daily workflows, it has become all the more important to provide cybersecurity guarantees in agriculture," said Ananth Kalyanaraman, director of WSU's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and of the AgAID AI Institute ^[4]. AI also tops the defence agenda. The first research priority on the list is using AI and other emerging technologies to detect, prevent and respond to cyberattacks ^[10].

I think the testbed pillar is the one to judge the consortium by, provided the sites run equipment that farms actually use. A sector that lacks tools for vulnerability assessment cannot yet say how exposed it is. A test site is where that exposure could be measured. One listed priority is building realistic farm testing environments to assess risks and understand what attackers can do ^[12]. The authors specify real-world agricultural equipment and environments, and say expanded facilities would support research, hands-on training, public demonstrations and evidence-based policies and standards ^[14].

Hands-on exercises could let participants practise responding to a cyberattack while keeping operations running ^[17]. The consortium would be national and spread across regions, built on partnerships with farms, cooperatives, agribusiness, cybersecurity businesses, government, NGOs and academia ^[3]. Hasan put the stakes beyond the farm. The consortium "will help bridge this gap and improve the cybersecurity posture of the critical agricultural sector, which also has national security implications," he said ^[18].