Home // International Journal On Advances in Security, volume 16, numbers 1 and 2, 2023 // View article

Enhanced Attack Resilience within Cyber Physical Systems

Authors:
Rainer Falk
Steffen Fries

Keywords: cyber security; cyber resilience; system integrity; cyber physical systems; industrial automation and control system; Internet of Things

Abstract:
Cyber physical systems control, monitor, and supervise physical, technical systems using information and communication technology, also called operation technology. The focus of cyber security is protection against cyber attacks, their detection, and recovery from successful cyber attacks. Cyber resilience aims at delivering an intended outcome of the cyber physical system despite attacks and adverse cyber events and even due to failures not directly related to attacks. Industrial security standards define how cyber physical systems and the used devices can be protected against attacks (prevent). Despite all efforts to protect from attacks, it should always be assumed that attacks may happen. Security monitoring allows to detect successful attacks (detect), so that corresponding measures can be performed (react). This paper describes an additional, complementary approach for protecting cyber physical systems. The devices are designed in a way that makes it harder to use them for launching attacks on other devices or on their physical environment. A device-internal hardware-based or isolated firewall limits the network traffic that the device software executed on the device can send or receive. Even if the device software contains a vulnerability allowing an attacker to compromise the device, the technically possible negative impact on other connected devices is limited, thereby enhancing the resilience of the cyber physical system in the presence of manipulated devices.

Pages: 1 to 11

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2023. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2023

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2636