Abstract
Industrial control systems are designed to be resilient, capable of recovering from process faults and failures with limited impact on operations. Current industrial control system resilience strategies use redundant programmable logic controllers. However, these redundant programmable logic controllers, which typically are the same or similar makes and models as the primary controllers, can be exploited by the same cyber attacks that target the primary controllers. This paper proposes a resilience strategy for industrial control systems that employs an active defense technique to reduce, if not eliminate, the likelihood of a common cause failure induced by a cyber attack. The active defense implementation is compared with a traditional industrial control system resilience implementation using a semi-simulated wastewater treatment system that was exposed to cyber attacks. The results demonstrate that the active defense implementation is very effective in the aftermath of a cyber attack whereas the traditional resilience implementation gives rise to a system disruption.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 30-48 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection |
Volume | 17 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2017 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This research was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT).
Funders | Funder number |
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U.S. Department of Homeland Security |
Keywords
- Active Defense
- Common Cause Failure
- Cyber Resilience
- Industrial Control Systems
- Wastewater Treatment System