IoT based agriculture (Ag-IoT): A detailed study on architecture, security and forensics

IoT based agriculture (Ag-IoT) is an emerging communication technology that is widely adopted by agricultural entrepreneurs and farmers to perform agricultural agro-chores in the farm to improve productivity, for better monitoring, and to reduce labor costs. However, the use of the Internet in Ag-IoT facilitates real-time functionality in an agriculture system, it can increase the risk of security breaches and cyber attacks that would cause the Ag-IoT system to malfunction and can affect its productivity. Ag-IoT is overlooked in cyber security parameters, which can have severe impacts on its trustworthiness and adoption by agricultural communities. To address this gap, this article presents a systematic study of the literature published between 2001 and 2023 that discusses advances in Ag-IoT technology. The subjects included in the study on Ag-IoT are emerging applications, different IoT architectures, suspected cyber attacks and cyber crimes, and challenges in incident response and digital forensics. The findings of this study encourage the reader to explore future potential research avenues related to the security risks and challenges of Ag-IoT, as well as the readiness for incident response and forensic investigation in the smart agricultural sector. The main conclusion of this study is that security must be ensured in Ag-IoT environments to offer uninterrupted services and also there is a need for forensic readiness for effective investigation in the event of unanticipated security incidents.