Hacking the Organism Through Digital Technology: Exploring Cyberbiosecurity Vulnerabilities, Threats, Risks and Their Mitigations

Security risk assessment and mitigation strategies are fundamental to all scientific disciplines. In modern risk landscapes, the most critical risks often arise rarely remain isolated within the boundaries of a single discipline, rather often arise at the intersection of disciplines where roles and responsibilities become ambiguous, and regulatory frameworks or governance structures have yet to adapt to evolving interdisciplinary challenges. One such important intersection of disciplines exists between computer science and biology or life science, which is evident across multiple fields and sectors, where overlapping risks are becoming novel hybrid risks (also known as cyber-biological or cyberbio risks) at the intersection of biological and digital systems. Addressing these hybrid risks or cyberbio risks is increasingly challenging for any single discipline due to the specific expertise, roles, and responsibilities to only that discipline; as well as discipline-specific regulatory frameworks and governance structures. Therefore, cross-disciplinary expertise and regulatory frameworks for the integrated biological and digital systems are required which can address these hybrid risks or cyberbio risks. This need has led to the emergence of an interdisciplinary field of cyberbiosecurity or biocybersecurity, as a response to these hybrid risks or cyberbio risks at the intersection of biological and digital systems. As it is a specialised security domain focusing on the integrated system where biological systems interact with digital systems, it is equally important to explore specific cyberbio threats, vulnerabilities, risks and their mitigations in the context of cyberbiosecurity or biocybersecurity. This paper will discuss all the aforementioned aspects of cyberbiosecurity or biocybersecurity in a detailed manner. Initially, it will discuss the main cyberbio threat actors and their associated threat actions. Subsequently, it will discuss critical cyberbio vulnerabilities which can be exploited by adversaries. Finally, it will discuss significant risks associated with cyberbiosecurity or biocybersecurity and their mitigation techniques. The comprehensive discussion presented in this paper aims to enhance readers’ understanding of the specialised domain of cyberbiosecurity or biocybersecurity and the associated cyber-biological threats, vulnerabilities, risks and their mitigations.