One potential area of biorisk + infosec work would be in improving the biotech industry’s ability to secure synthesis & lab automation technology from use in creating dangerous pathogens / organisms.
This could be done via circumventing existing controls (i.e. ordering a virus which is on a banned-sequence list), or by hijacking synthesis equipment itself. So protecting this type of infrastructure may be super important. I could see this being a more policy oriented role, but one that would require infosec skills.
I expect this work to be valuable if someone possessed both the political acumen to convince the relevant policy-makers / companies that it was worthwhile and the technical / organizational skill to put solid controls in place. I don’t expect this kind of work to be done by default unless something bad happens [i.e. a company is hacked and a dangerous organism is produced]. So having someone driving preventative measures before any disaster happens could be valuable.
One potential area of biorisk + infosec work would be in improving the biotech industry’s ability to secure synthesis & lab automation technology from use in creating dangerous pathogens / organisms.
This could be done via circumventing existing controls (i.e. ordering a virus which is on a banned-sequence list), or by hijacking synthesis equipment itself. So protecting this type of infrastructure may be super important. I could see this being a more policy oriented role, but one that would require infosec skills.
I expect this work to be valuable if someone possessed both the political acumen to convince the relevant policy-makers / companies that it was worthwhile and the technical / organizational skill to put solid controls in place. I don’t expect this kind of work to be done by default unless something bad happens [i.e. a company is hacked and a dangerous organism is produced]. So having someone driving preventative measures before any disaster happens could be valuable.