Cyberbiosecurity. A short review

Abstract

In the new digital age, life sciences tend to converge with information technology and cybersecurity. With the new developments in biomedical research and the scientific progress of modern biotechnology, there is an exponential multiplication of related information sets, which require cloud storage and advanced methods of management and analysis, as well as ensuring an adequate protection of their content. The bioeconomy global landscape involves common, multiple and diverse actions (i.e specific policies and framework regulations, international cooperation, national collaboration among interdisciplinary sectors and different actors of the public-private system). At the same time, biosecurity issues highlight a complex and rapidly emerging ecosystem, which involves high-risk vulnerabilities. Moreover, the current pandemic context, generated by the global spread of the new virus, SARS-CoV-2, has pointed out some issues (i.e the importance of strategic autonomy in supply chains - food, medical and pharmaceutical products, the development of critical functional infrastructures, the appropriate prevention and protection measures, including the management of rapid and effective responses to pandemics or other potential malicious actions with regard to the use of infectious biological agents, natural or artificial). As science evolves, relying on the application of new technologies in areas such as artificial intelligence, process automation, bioinformatics and synthetic biology, vulnerabilities such as data confidentiality (i.e clinical, genetic information), cloud storage, intellectual property, may represent opportunities which could be exploited. Cybersecurity needs to be as robust as possible, anticipating and incorporating possible biological threats into its strategies. This paper presents a synthetic overview of cyberbiosecurity available data, with the view to emphasize some of its strategic approaches currently used in the world/at the international level.