to: Department of Agriculture

From: Lillian Martin

Date: 9/12/2024

Subject: Digital Preservation Software Support, Cybersecurity and its use in Agriculture.

As you may know cybersecurity and agriculture are some of the most important aspects of modern society, but the two fields are usually considered to be quite different. However, cybersecurity and technology have been widely used in agriculture, and with the use of automated farms becoming more common it leaves more and more of modern society being particularly in danger of hacking. Cyber-attacks have harmed food production in the past, such as when 13 meat processing plants in the US were shut down due to ransomware.

Archivematica can be used by the National Agricultural Library to protect their technology from cyber-attacks. The uses of Archivematica includes but is not limited to, software and hardware intended to protect against data loss, eliminating potential data risks and supporting users.

One question I have is how Archivematica could be implemented on a large scale. I also believe that the overall proposal is too general and not specific enough to stop cyber-attacks in the future. Pretty much every company will be hacked at some point, and simply having an archive of your data isn’t enough to protect yourself against threats.

While an archive of backup data is important for any company that has been hacked, I also believe that having a system in place that can protect against being hacked in the first place is also important. Something as important as agriculture should not be as vulnerable to cyber-attacks as it is currently.

SAM.govLinks to an external site.

ArchivematicaLinks to an external site.