Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
With an increasing trend of broadband adoption and the necessity to drive greater production efficiencies and near real-time monitoring of resources (both financial and product flow) across the entire supply chain, rural Forest Products and Bioenergy (FPB) industries are now at greater risk of cyber-attacks. Due to a lack of resources and even awareness, rural businesses can easily be an attractive target for cyber-attacks, which may lead to account hijacking, ransom, data loss, or even running out of business. Given that rural businesses experience a set of different unique cyber challenges compared to their urban counterparts, it is urgent to quickly understand the sources of risk and associated cyber vulnerability within the rural FPB production pathway. Realizing the urgency, this study aims to gain a detailed understanding of the state of FPB cybersecurity practices, the risk and potential consequences that stem from cybersecurity vulnerabilities, assess cybersecurity technologies and affordability, and gather stakeholder input to identify the capability gaps in cybersecurity that exist within the FPB industry. Specifically, this seed grant will (1) survey to gauge the current knowledge and cyber practices in the rural FPB industry; (2) conduct hypothesis testing to determine any possible relationship within the collected survey data; (3) identify hotspots of cyber risks and potential consequences to industries and connected societies within the FPB production pathway via developing a system thinking approach; (4) assess cyber risks and vulnerabilities to related local industries and propose recommendations to develop affordable cyber solutions for the rural businesses.
Animal Health Component
25%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
25%
Developmental
25%
Goals / Objectives
With an increasing trend of broadband adoption and the necessity to drive greater production efficiencies and near real-time monitoring of resources (both financial and product flow) across the entire supply chain, rural Forest Products and Bioenergy (FPB) industries are now at greater risk of cyber-attacks. Due to a lack of resources and even awareness, rural businesses can easily be an attractive target for cyber-attacks, which may lead to account hijacking, ransom, data loss, or even running out of business. Given that rural businesses experience a set of different unique cyber challenges compared to their urban counterparts, it is urgent to quickly understand the sources of risk and associated cyber vulnerability within the rural FPB production pathway. Realizing the urgency, this study aims to gain a detailed understanding of the state of FPB cybersecurity practices, the risk and potential consequences that stem from cybersecurity vulnerabilities, assess cybersecurity technologies and affordability, and gather stakeholder input to identify the capability gaps in cybersecurity that exist within the FPB industry. Specifically, this seed grant will (1) survey to gauge the current knowledge and cyber practices in the rural FPB industry; (2) conduct hypothesis testing to determine any possible relationship within the collected survey data; (3) identify hotspots of cyber risks and potential consequences to industries and connected societies within the FPB production pathway via developing a system thinking approach; (4) assess cyber risks and vulnerabilities to related local industries and propose recommendations to develop affordable cyber solutions for the rural businesses.
Project Methods
This research project aims to gain a detailed understanding of the state of the cybersecurity practices (e.g., technological adoption or workforce challenges) within the forest product and bioenergy (FPB) industries and find capability gaps and affordability recommendations via stakeholder engagement. This objective will be achieved by addressing the following two specific aims.Specific Aim #1: Map the current cyber readiness level of the rural FPB industries via surveys, interviews, and focus groups:This aimconsists of two sub-tasks: (i) outlining hypotheses and survey, and (ii) survey data analysis and relationship modeling. In the first sub-task, we willsurvey rural FPB stakeholders to gauge their past experiences, current knowledge, and perceptions of cybersecurity and deepen our understanding of how different factors (e.g., age, education, gender, role in the company, business type/size/income) might impact the technology adoption.The population of the survey will be comprised of owners, managers, IT, and production operators within the rural FPB pathway located in four southeast states: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. We aim to collect at least 150 successful survey responses from FPB industries, such as pellet, pulp & paper, timber harvesting, solid wood products (e.g., utility poles, composites), and bioenergy industries. The survey will be conducted via postal mail (provided with a pre-paid return postage envelope), online (via MSU free Qualtrics service), and onsite visits by the project investigators and will be disseminated in social media (e.g., LinkedIn) and professional societies and associations (e.g., National Hardwood Lumber Association, Mississippi Forestry Association). After completing the survey, we will employ two methods to analyze the collected survey data: (i) ordinal logit (PLUM) regression and (ii) discrete choice model to test the hypotheses posed under sub-task 1for further behavioral analysis.Specific Aim #2: Identify hotspots of cyber risk, potential consequences, and current readiness level via developing a system thinking approach and risk equation. This task consists of two sub-tasks: (i) identify hotspots of cyber risks via systems thinking, and (ii) cyber risk score modeling and testing in FPB industries. In the firstsub-task we will develop a System Thinking (ST) approach to mapping product and information flow within an FPB production pathway and identify potential hotspots for cyber risks and associated vulnerabilities in order to enhance our current understanding and devise an affordable solution to increase cyber resiliency.Realizing the lack of qualified workforce or equipment to assess cyber risk in the rural FPB industries, in the second sub-task we will develop a simple yet interpretable risk equation to quantify cyber risk and assess the current cyber readiness level in the business.The utility of the developed risk equation will be assessed in 15 rural FPB industries and the lessons will be utilized to redefine/remodel the risk equation if needed.