Home // International Journal On Advances in Security, volume 10, numbers 1 and 2, 2017 // View article

Verifying the Adherence to Security Policies for Secure Communication in Critical Infrastructures

Authors:
Steffen Fries
Rainer Falk

Keywords: critical infrastructure; smart energy grid; industrial automation; Internet of Things; Digital Grid secure communication; security policy; security protocol; Transport Layer Security

Abstract:
Critical infrastructures (CI) as backbone of the society and economy are increasingly the target of cyber attacks. These infrastructures have been isolated in the past, but are connected more and more also with CI-external systems to allow for new and combined services. This immediately requires the protection of the communication connections to CI-external sites but also internally. Legislation and operation have taken this into account and provide the necessary framework for posing specific communication security requirements. From the technical side, different security counter measures exist to cope with the given requirements, but it has to be ensured that these technical means are not only provided, but in fact applied in operation. This paper describes a new approach to ensure that during the setup of a secure communication connection the appropriate security is effectively negotiated with respect to permissible cipher suites for authentication, message integrity, and confidentiality. The application within a Digital Grid is used as example application domain.

Pages: 61 to 71

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2017. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2017

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2636