Security Threats in Agriculture 4.0

The advent of sensing technologies and their subsequent application to the agricultural domain have impacted this field to such a momentous extent that they have literally triggered a new era, the so-called 4^th agricultural revolution or agriculture 4.0. Precision agriculture and smart farming have started to transform agriculture from a labor-intensive to a technology-based domain, promising higher productivity and increased crop yield, as well as more effective livestock raising, through the extensive use of state-of-the art technologies, such as wireless sensing nodes, cloud infrastructure, IoT environments, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones), autonomous tractors, and connected machinery. The application, however, of the aforementioned information and communication (ICT) technologies introduces new vulnerabilities and poses previously unconsidered security threats in this domain, which are often overlooked or being treated out of context, despite the fact that the agriculture and food sector has been recognized as a highly critical infrastructure. Unfortunately, relevant research efforts until today have mostly focused on addressing the conventional vulnerabilities of the involved ICT technologies, such as cyberthreats, as possibly encountered in other industrial contexts, without clear specialization to the risks associated with agriculture. The aim of this Special Issue is to collect research and review papers dealing with the identification of specific security issues and concerns related to the agricultural domain, as well as the presentation and discussion of potential solutions and mitigation measures. Relevant topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Security of agricultural data;
• Data management and ownership;
• Cyberattack risks and prevention actions;
• Stakeholder awareness of security threats;
• Security of IoT systems and networks used in agriculture
• Security of small and large scale monitoring systems used in agriculture
• Threats for precision agriculture
• Cybersecurtity of IoT protocols and systems
• Threats to agri-food-related critical infrastructures (e.g., water management);
• Security threats across the agricultural supply chain;
• Misinformation regarding the agri-cultural domain.

Dr. Evgenia Adamopoulou
Prof. Dr. Michal Choras
Guest Editors

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