AgraSEC - Data Security in Cooperative Agricultural Processes

For the large state of Lower-Saxony in Germany the agriculture poses an important industrial factor and ranges with a gross value added of 3.37 billion Euros in 2014 at the second place in comparison to the other federal states. Furthermore, and especially in the greater area of Osnabrück, a majority of Germany’s agriculture machine manufactures are located here. The economic pressure to produce in high quantities with the usage of few resources has led to an increasing automatisation and industrialisation in the agriculture sector. In the next years an additional change can be foreseen: To optimise and document processes (harvesting, fertilisation) agriculture machine will communicate with each other. An “Internet of Agriculture” is developing.

This networking has a huge economic potential for the optimisation of the processes and the efficient exchange of data, but it also entails major risks to security. So it is currently unclear how the access rights to the data should be managed. However, the protection of their data is an existential necessity for the agricultural business. There is also a lack of standardised procedures for the secure communication between the distributed machines in the field and the IT infrastructure. Compared to other industrial processes, the dynamism of changing agriculture machines and actors is a major challenge. EU and federal guidelines increasingly require proof of environmental friendly and sustainable management of the fields. However, it is still very unclear how in agricultural processes and at which processing point the data must be collected and transmitted in order to prevent adulteration and deniability. Some other industrial sectors have rapidly pushed networking in their processes, but are faced with problems due to the missed, early integration of security measures (see Industry 4.0).