Increasing Cyber Resiliency of Industrial Control Systems

Abstract

Industrial control systems (ICS) are designed to be resilient, capable of recovering from process faults and failures with limited impact to operations. Current ICS resiliency strategies use redundant PLCs. However, these redundant PLCs, being of similar make and model, can be exploited by the same cyber attack, defeating the ICS's resiliency strategy. This research proposes a resiliency strategy for ICS that employs an active defense technique to remove the cyber common cause failure. The resiliency of the active defense strategy is compared to traditional ICS resiliency by implementing both strategies in a semi-simulated wastewater treatment plant aeration basin that experiences a cyber attack. The active defense technique was shown to maintain effective treatment of the wastewater through the cyber attack where the traditional implementation allowed a process disruption that prevented the effective treatment of the wastewater.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 23, 2017
Accession Number
AD1054728

Entities

People

  • Andrew J. Chaves

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Active Defense
  • Air Force
  • Control Systems
  • Cyberattacks
  • Department Of Defense
  • Department Of Homeland Security
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Governments
  • Industrial Control Systems
  • Information Operations
  • Intrusion Detection
  • Network Topology
  • Operating Systems
  • Reliability
  • United States
  • United States Government

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Cybersecurity.
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Strategic Security Studies

Technology Areas

  • Cyber