Importance of Cyber Security in Modern Agriculture

Smart technologies are widely adopted in agriculture in order to meet the rise in food demands. Increased connectivity and automation also lead to the risk of cyberattacks on farms. The rising frequency of security breaches in a lot of industries shows the need to secure the food supply. “Smart Farming (SF)” and “Precision Agriculture (PA)” have gained a lot of attention over the years from both researchers and the agriculture sector. Both PA and SF are aimed to help farmers to use pesticides and fertilizers more efficiently using “Internet of Things (IoT)” devices but they pose new security threats to overthrow this purpose without proper countermeasures and awareness. A survey is needed on various security issues to improve awareness and pave further research paths in this domain. This study first discusses the security patterns of PA and SF. Next, this study conducts a review of cyberattacks which can violate all such aspects. Accordingly, this study presents existing areas of improvement and initiatives to ensure cybersecurity in farming. Finally, strategies related to risk mitigation and countermeasures have been studied and future directions have been proposed for further research. The main contribution of this study is classifying security threats in the domains of precision farming and smart farming to provide a taxonomy of threats to determine the behavior of attacks in both areas.