Creating solutions to support farmers

Work Package Two: Development of cyber-security solutions to support farmers in particular designing an online platform call “Virtual Chief Information Security Officer” (vCISO).

I actively try to learn about different sectors in society and business and how they are impacted by the cyber criminals. I hope that having a platform like the vCISO will give farmers an opportunity to open their eyes to  their cyber-system, it can be huge help for them.

A cyber threat intelligent platform will tell the farmers, they are vulnerable, but there is help available and things they can do to protect their business.

If you want farmers to change their cyber-security behaviour, first we need to have the technical people look at what they really have on their farm and then prove that they are vulnerable to some kind of cyber-threat, and then you can go to them and say, this evidence, and here you go.

The challenge we faced is that we know it takes a lot of time to go out to each farm and check each system manually and we don’t have that many cyber experts in the country.

The easiest way to reach a lot of people is to create an online platform and that platform can run checks of each farmer’s system and tell them the assets and how much or if they have a vulnerability with these devices.

The project team will design a virtual CISO (vCISO) platform to assist farmers and supply chain associations in developing mitigation strategies in response to cybersecurity threats, considering governance issues, auditing, business continuity, and disaster recovery. This will be achieved by managing and testing cybersecurity assets, finding security flaws in agricultural cyber technologies.

Designing and integrating a vCISO, which will identify and assess risks and communicate these risks and potential controls to farmers. This includes:

• Discover critical processes ensuring business continuity to improve the visibility of risks and decision making.
• Develop a cross-platform web/mobile app that enables the communication between vCISO and non-technical stakeholders, such as farmers.
• Uplift cybersecurity maturity level by developing mitigation strategies in response to cybersecurity threats by:
  • protecting data assets after the data breach
  • evidence collection and root cause analysis
  • preventing future loss
  • threat management.
• Integrating technology to scan farm and supply chain assets for threat intelligence and security configuration management.
• Integrating asset management technology for inventorying agriculture and supply chain services in hybrid environments.
• Integrating technology for software and hardware security assurance to mitigate vulnerabilities before the business is affected.

Drs

• Hamed Aboutorab
• Michael Bewong
• Hang Thanh Bui