Policy brief: Synthetic biology and future crime
Synthetic biology involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to possess new capabilities. This briefing identifies examples of potential crimes that are or could be enabled by synthetic biology, including cyber-biocrime, and suggests some steps that could be taken to prevent them. For example, the introduction of a National Centre for Biosecurity and Biosafety and a continuous “red-teaming” approach to emerging technology.
A full description of the crimes is available in the systematic review.
Cyberbiosecurity addresses the evolving threat of biotechnology misuse and the emerging risks between cyberspace and biology to develop policies to manage them. In addition to traditional cyber-attacks such as exploitation in unsecured networks and manipulated biological data, cyber-biocrime exploits physical processing involving biological materials that could result in unwanted or dangerous biological outcomes.
