A security risk mitigation framework for cyber physical systems (original) (raw)

Countermeasures to Enhance Cyber-physical System Security and Safety

2014 IEEE 38th International Computer Software and Applications Conference Workshops, 2014

An application of two Cyber-Physical System (CPS) security countermeasures-Intelligent Checker (IC) and Cross-correlator-for enhancing CPS safety and achieving required CPS safety integrity level is presented. ICs are smart sensors aimed at detecting attacks in CPS and alerting the human operators. Cross-correlator is an anomaly detection technique for detecting deception attacks. We show how ICs could be implemented at three different CPS safety protection layers to maintain CPS in a safe state. In addition, we combine ICs with the cross-correlator technique to assure high probability of failure detection. Performance simulations show that a combination of these two security countermeasures is effective in detecting and mitigating CPS failures, including catastrophic failures.

Continuous assurance for cyber physical system security

The security and privacy of cyber-physical systems (CPS) has been the subject of a lot of concern in the recent past especially in the context of the safety of critical infrastructure such as the power grid, transportation, and manufacturing environment. We envision that ensuring the security and privacy of these systems is really part of designing a resilient cyber-physical system. The grand challenge is really to provide continuous assurance of the operating objectives. In order to achieve continuous assurance, we believe fundamental research efforts need to be devoted to the challenges faced by fine-grained isolation, real-world aware, risk-adjusted resource allocation, and closing the loop.

State of the art of cyber-physical systems security: An automatic control perspective

Journal of Systems and Software, 2018

Context: Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are integrations of computation, networking, and physical processes. Due to the tight cyberphysical coupling and to the potentially disrupting consequences of failures, security is one of the primary concerns for this type of systems. CPS security is attracting several research efforts from different and independent areas (e.g., secure control, intrusion detection in SCADA systems, etc.), each of them with specific peculiarities, features, and capabilities, resulting in a considerably variegated and complex scientific body of knowledge on the topic. Objective: In this study we aim at identifying, classifying, and analyzing existing research on CPS security in order to better understand how security is actually addressed when dealing with cyber-physical systems. Based on this analysis of the state of the art, we also aim at identifying the implications for future research on CPS security. Method: In order to achieve this, we designed and conducted a systematic mapping study to identify, classify, and compare relevant studies proposing a method or technique for cyber-physical systems security. A comparison framework for classifying methods or techniques for CPS security has been empirically defined; identified relevant studies have been classified on the basis of publication trends, their characteristics and focus, and their validation strategies. Results: We selected a total of 118 primary studies as a result of the systematic mapping process. From the collected data we can observe that (i) even if solutions for CPS security has emerged only recently, in the last years they are gaining a sharply increasing scientific interest across heterogeneous publication venues; (ii) the bulk of the works on security for cyber-physical systems is focused on power grids, and the approaches considering attacks on sensors and their protection completely dominate the scene; regardless of application field and considered system components, all the works on CPS security deal with attacks, in order to either implement or to counteract them, and putting together all this studies gives us the possibility to categorize the existing (cyber-physical) attack models; it comes as surprise that very few papers consider communication aspects or imperfections and attempt to provide non-trivial mathematical models of the communication; (iii) most advanced and realistic validation methods have been exploited in the power networks application domain, but even there a benchmark is still missing. Conclusion: The systematic map of research on CPS security provided here is based on, for instance, application fields, various system components, related algorithms and models, attacks characteristics and defense strategies. This work presents a powerful comparison framework for existing and future research on this hot topic, important for both industry and academia.

Cyber-physical systems: A security perspective

2015 20th IEEE European Test Symposium (ETS), 2015

A cyber-physical system (CPS) is a composition of independently interacting components, including computational elements, communications and control systems. Applications of CPS institute at different levels of integration, ranging from nationwide power grids, to medium scale, such as the smart home, and small scale, e.g. ubiquitous health care systems including implantable medical devices. Cyber-physical systems primarily transmute how we interact with the physical world, with each system requiring different levels of security based on the sensitivity of the control system and the information it carries. Considering the remarkable progress in CPS technologies during recent years, advancement in security and trust measures is much needed to counter the security violations and privacy leakage of integration elements. This paper focuses on security and privacy concerns at different levels of the composition and presents system level solutions for ensuring the security and trust of modern cyber-physical systems.

Three tenets for secure cyber-physical system design and assessment

Cyber Sensing 2014, 2014

This paper presents a threat-driven quantitative mathematical framework for secure cyber-physical system design and assessment. Called The Three Tenets, this originally empirical approach has been used by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for secure system research and development. The Tenets were first documented in 2005 as a teachable methodology. The Tenets are motivated by a system threat model that itself consists of three elements which must exist for successful attacks to occur:-system susceptibility;-threat accessibility and;-threat capability. The Three Tenets arise naturally by countering each threat element individually. Specifically, the tenets are: Tenet 1: Focus on What's Critical-systems should include only essential functions (to reduce susceptibility); Tenet 2: Move Key Assets Out-of-Band-make mission essential elements and security controls difficult for attackers to reach logically and physically (to reduce accessibility); Tenet 3: Detect, React, Adapt-confound the attacker by implementing sensing system elements with dynamic response technologies (to counteract the attackers' capabilities). As a design methodology, the Tenets mitigate reverse engineering and subsequent attacks on complex systems. Quantified by a Bayesian analysis and further justified by analytic properties of attack graph models, the Tenets suggest concrete cyber security metrics for system assessment.

INVESTIGATION STUDY OF CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS: CHARACTERISTICS, APPLICATION DOMAINS, AND SECURITY CHALLENGES

Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN), 2017

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are currently widely used in people's daily lives but present risks and threats, especially when used by cybercriminals against the governments, corporations, organizations, or individuals. CPS applications are increasingly becoming attractive and are targeted by cyber-attacks. Tools and theories that can be used by organizations and researchers to understand the types of new threats and the impacts that each threat can cause to the physical systems are lacking at present. In this research, current physical security threats of CPSs for the last few years are investigated to briefly describe the usage, application domains, and security challenges of CPSs in their field of application. This work serves a basis for further studies on cyber physical security.

Cyber-Security Incidents: A Review Cases in Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems refer to systems that have an interaction between computers, communication channels and physical devices to solve a real-world problem. Towards industry 4.0 revolution, Cyber-Physical Systems currently become one of the main targets of hackers and any damage to them lead to high losses to a nation. According to valid resources, several cases reported involved security breaches on Cyber-Physical Systems. Understanding fundamental and theoretical concept of security in the digital world was discussed worldwide. Yet, security cases in regard to the cyber-physical system are still remaining less explored. In addition, limited tools were introduced to overcome security problems in Cyber-Physical System. To improve understanding and introduce a lot more security solutions for the cyber-physical system, the study on this matter is highly on demand. In this paper, we investigate the current threats on Cyber-Physical Systems and propose a classification and matrix for these threats, and conduct a simple statistical analysis of the collected data using a quantitative approach. We confirmed four components i.e., (the type of attack, impact, intention and incident categories) main contributor to threat taxonomy of Cyber-Physical Systems.

Cyber-Physical Systems and their Security Issues

Savunma bilimleri dergisi, 2022

The creation of cyber-physical systems posed new challenges for people. Ensuring the information security of cyber-physical systems is one of the most complex problems in a wide range of defenses against cyber-attacks. The aim of this paper is to analyse and classify existing research papers on the security of cyber-physical systems. Philosophical issues of cyber-physical systems are raised. Their influence on the aspects of people's lives is investigated. The principle of cyber-physical system operation is described. The main difficulties and solutions in the estimation of the consequences of cyber-attacks, attacks modeling and detection and the development of security architecture are noted. The main types of attacks and threats against cyber-physical systems are analysed. A tree of attacks on cyber-physical systems is proposed. The future research directions are shown.