Virginia Tech® home

Intelligent agriculture

Man operating a drone in a field

Cyber-resilient food and agriculture systems

The agriculture industry is no stranger to pests, but what happens when the threat is online? Farmers around the world are adopting emerging technologies to increase yields and improve resiliency, but cyberattackers can worm their way into vulnerabilities in the systems and pose significant risks to food supply chains. Our researchers are establishing Virginia as a global leader in smart and secure agriculture technologies and data analytics for informed decisions while advancing the commonwealth’s capacity for farms of the future.

CCI SWVA intelligent agriculture research programs include:

  • Designing security guidelines and strategies to protect domestic and global food supply.
  • Advancing understanding of biological data progression in the agriculture and food system and where data vulnerabilities exist.
  • Increasing workforce capacity in cyberbiosecurity with experiential learning.
  • Designing algorithms to mitigate unauthorized data injection, unauthorized control of automated systems, and vulnerability of machine learning algorithms that jeopardize biological and process-based data.
  • Developing cyberbiosecurity strategies for the food and agricultural system, gaps in workforce and training, and research and policy needs.
  • Considering information security in wireless IoT sensors to ensure the trustworthiness of cattle monitoring systems.
  • Developing testbeds for agricultural technologies and innovations, focusing on the needs of farmers in rural Southwestern Virginia .

Associated research program pages

News