Cybersecurity in Precision Agriculture: a short review and a practical status assessment over mySense IoT-based platform

The digitalization of the agricultural sector has been unlocking innovative farming strategies that range from intensive and accurate crop monitoring to informed decision making for field interventions that, currently, may be carried out by humans and machines, towards an increasingly more sustainable production. Notwithstanding, digitalization also raises security threats, such as hacking, malware, and phishing attacks, which are particularly concerning due to the vulnerability of implemented systems, leaving gaps for data breaches, theft of confidential information, and disruptions in agricultural operations, with potential for severe economic and social impacts. Having such concerns in mind, this paper explores the current state of Cybersecurity in Precision Agriculture (PA) and the Internet of Things (IoT), with the goal of providing an overview of the latest trends, developments, and challenges related to digital security within the contexts of the referred areas. Additionally, a comprehensive approach addressing Cybersecurity issues is proposed, considering an PA-oriented IoT platform under development known as mySense (https://mysenseapi.utad.pt) as a case-study, aiming at identifying vulnerabilities in it and proposing recommendations to cope with the security challenges in environments characterized by the rapid technological progress and digital transformation in agriculture that have been witnessed.