The Bioeconomy Information Sharing and Analysis Center (BIO-ISAC) and New York Metro InfraGard Members Alliance® (NYM-IMA) today announced a partnership to address threats unique to the bioeconomy and enable coordination among stakeholders to facilitate a robust and secure industry.
BIO-ISAC is a critical resource for cyber threat detection, prevention, protection, response, recovery and resilience in the bioeconomy. It helps spur the development and evaluation of defensive tools to address ongoing and emerging threats, and includes vulnerability identification and mitigation, and education and outreach, aimed at reducing risk to the nation's biosecurity infrastructure.
BIO-ISAC partnering with NYM-IMA advances our efforts to strengthen our resilience from attacks on the public and private bioeconomy infrastructure. We look forward to developing our collaboration to further enhance, maintain and implement best practices and standards to improve global digital biosecurity."
Nina Alli, board member of BIO-ISAC.
The bioeconomy is defined as economic activity driven by research and innovation in the life sciences and biotechnology and enabled by technological advances in engineering and in computing and information sciences. A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report published in 2020 values the bioeconomy at more than 5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, or more than $950 billion.*
The digitization of life sciences has resulted in the emergence of a complex ecosystem plagued with cybersecurity challenges. We are privileged to collaborate with the BIO-ISAC, a team of exceptionally talented technologists. We support their efforts and share their commitment to safeguarding the cybersecurity of the bioeconomy. To protect our bioeconomy adequately, we must constantly assess the current threat landscape and our response capabilities. This collaboration broadens our aperture, and we believe it will have a significant impact."
Jennifer Gold, president, NY Metro InfraGard.
The bioeconomy spans multiple U.S. Critical Infrastructure sectors, including Health Care and Public Health, Critical Manufacturing, Food and Agriculture, Chemical, Energy, Government Facilities, Information Technology, Water and Wastewater, and the Defense Industrial Base Sectors.
BIO-ISAC members are bioeconomy-connected industry leaders, organizations, and academic
institutions connected to Biomanufacturing, BioPharma, BioProducts (synthetic bio), software and hardware vendors, national security, and agriculture. BIO-ISAC also acts as the convening place for trusted international partners to collaborate on digital biosecurity and biological supply chain security issues.
InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of the private sector for the protection of U.S. Critical Infrastructure. Through seamless collaboration, InfraGard connects owners and operators within critical infrastructure to the FBI, to provide education, information sharing, networking, and workshops on emerging technologies and threats. InfraGard's membership includes business executives, entrepreneurs, lawyers, security personnel, military and government officials, IT professionals, academia and state and local law enforcement—all dedicated to contributing industry-specific insight and advancing national security.