Cyber Resilience Through Software-Layer Digital Twin

Abstract

A complex, resource-intensive system such as a hybrid of information technology (IT), operational technology (OT), cloud computing networks, etc. can potentially be analyzed for cybersecurity and resilience by creating its digital twin. However, traditional approaches to creating digital twins involve accurate modelling of both the hardware and software layers, which renders the rapid design, deployment, and scaling of digital twins infeasible. This disclosure describes techniques to efficiently create a digital twin of a complex, resource-intensive system by decoupling its software and the hardware layers, by creating a digital twin for the software layer, and by modeling the hardware layer by accurately capturing changes in hardware states caused under software control. By doing so, modelers effectively create twins of the software and of the hardware interactions with software, making the design of the digital twin substantially faster. The digital twin can be subjected to chaos engineering based offensive testing to discover gaps in control-to-subsystem/component interactions, potential exploits, threats that can perform malicious actions, etc., and can also be used to design mitigative or compensatory security controls. The digital twin can be used for proactive cyberstudies relating to security, resilience, etc