A physical overlay framework for insider threat mitigation of power system devices

Nearly every aspect of modern life today, from businesses, transportation, and healthcare, depends on the power grid operating safely and reliably. While the recent push for a “Smart Grid” has shown promise for increased efficiency, security has often been an afterthought, leaving this critical infrastructure vulnerable to a variety of cyber attacks. For instance, devices crucial to the safe operation of the power grid are left in remote substations with their configuration interfaces completely open, providing a vector for outsiders as well as insiders to launch an attack. This paper develops the framework for an overlay network of gateway devices that provide authenticated access control and security monitoring for these vulnerable interfaces. We develop a working prototype of such a device and simulate the performance of deployment throughout a substation. Our results suggest that such a system can be deployed with negligible impact on normal operations, while providing important security mechanisms. By doing so, we demonstrate that our proposal is a practical and efficient solution for retro-fitting security onto crucial power system devices.M.S

IoT Sentinel: Automated Device-Type Identification for Security Enforcement in IoT

With the rapid growth of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), concerns about the security of IoT devices have become prominent. Several vendors are producing IP-connected devices for home and small office networks that often suffer from flawed security designs and implementations. They also tend to lack mechanisms for firmware updates or patches that can help eliminate security vulnerabilities. Securing networks where the presence of such vulnerable devices is given, requires a brownfield approach: applying necessary protection measures within the network so that potentially vulnerable devices can coexist without endangering the security of other devices in the same network. In this paper, we present IOT SENTINEL, a system capable of automatically identifying the types of devices being connected to an IoT network and enabling enforcement of rules for constraining the communications of vulnerable devices so as to minimize damage resulting from their compromise. We show that IOT SENTINEL is effective in identifying device types and has minimal performance overhead

Cloud Computing: Challenges And Risk Management Framework

Cloud-computing technology has developed rapidly. It can be found in a wide range of social, business and computing applications. Cloud computing would change the Internet into a new computing and collaborative platform. It is a business model that achieves purchase ondemand and pay-per-use in network. Many competitors, organizations and companies in the industry have jumped into cloud computing and implemented it. Cloud computing provides us with things such as convenience, reduced cost and high scalability. But despite all of these advantages, there are many enterprises, individual users and organizations that still have not deployed this innovative technology. Several reasons lead to this problem; however, the main concerns are related to security, privacy and trust. Low trust between users and cloud computing providers has been found in the literature

Security Challenges from Abuse of Cloud Service Threat

Cloud computing is an ever-growing technology that leverages dynamic and versatile provision of computational resources and services. In spite of countless benefits that cloud service has to offer, there is always a security concern for new threats and risks. The paper provides a useful introduction to the rising security issues of Abuse of cloud service threat, which has no standard security measures to mitigate its risks and vulnerabilities. The threat can result an unbearable system gridlock and can make cloud services unavailable or even complete shutdown. The study has identified the potential challenges, as BotNet, BotCloud, Shared Technology Vulnerability and Malicious Insiders, from Abuse of cloud service threat. It has further described the attacking methods, impacts and the reasons due to the identified challenges. The study has evaluated the current available solutions and proposed mitigating security controls for the security risks and challenges from Abuse of cloud services threat

Cybersecurity issues in software architectures for innovative services

The recent advances in data center development have been at the basis of the widespread success of the cloud computing paradigm, which is at the basis of models for software based applications and services, which is the "Everything as a Service" (XaaS) model. According to the XaaS model, service of any kind are deployed on demand as cloud based applications, with a great degree of flexibility and a limited need for investments in dedicated hardware and or software components. This approach opens up a lot of opportunities, for instance providing access to complex and widely distributed applications, whose cost and complexity represented in the past a significant entry barrier, also to small or emerging businesses. Unfortunately, networking is now embedded in every service and application, raising several cybersecurity issues related to corruption and leakage of data, unauthorized access, etc. However, new service-oriented architectures are emerging in this context, the so-called services enabler architecture. The aim of these architectures is not only to expose and give the resources to these types of services, but it is also to validate them. The validation includes numerous aspects, from the legal to the infrastructural ones e.g., but above all the cybersecurity threats. A solid threat analysis of the aforementioned architecture is therefore necessary, and this is the main goal of this thesis. This work investigate the security threats of the emerging service enabler architectures, providing proof of concepts for these issues and the solutions too, based on several use-cases implemented in real world scenarios

Risk Assessment Framework for Evaluation of Cybersecurity Threats and Vulnerabilities in Medical Devices

Medical devices are vulnerable to cybersecurity exploitation and, while they can provide improvements to clinical care, they can put healthcare organizations and their patients at risk of adverse impacts. Evidence has shown that the proliferation of devices on medical networks present cybersecurity challenges for healthcare organizations due to their lack of built-in cybersecurity controls and the inability for organizations to implement security controls on them. The negative impacts of cybersecurity exploitation in healthcare can include the loss of patient confidentiality, risk to patient safety, negative financial consequences for the organization, and loss of business reputation. Assessing the risk of vulnerabilities and threats to medical devices can inform healthcare organizations toward prioritization of resources to reduce risk most effectively. In this research, we build upon a database-driven approach to risk assessment that is based on the elements of threat, vulnerability, asset, and control (TVA-C). We contribute a novel framework for the cybersecurity risk assessment of medical devices. Using a series of papers, we answer questions related to the risk assessment of networked medical devices. We first conducted a case study empirical analysis that determined the scope of security vulnerabilities in a typical computerized medical environment. We then created a cybersecurity risk framework to identify threats and vulnerabilities to medical devices and produce a quantified risk assessment. These results supported actionable decision making at managerial and operational levels of a typical healthcare organization. Finally, we applied the framework using a data set of medical devices received from a partnering healthcare organization. We compare the assessment results of our framework to a commercial risk assessment vulnerability management system used to analyze the same assets. The study also compares our framework results to the NIST Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores related to identified vulnerabilities reported through the Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) program. As a result of these studies, we recognize several contributions to the area of healthcare cybersecurity. To begin with, we provide the first comprehensive vulnerability assessment of a robotic surgical environment, using a da Vinci surgical robot along with its supporting computing assets. This assessment supports the assertion that networked computer environments are at risk of being compromised in healthcare facilities. Next, our framework, known as MedDevRisk, provides a novel method for risk quantification. In addition, our assessment approach uniquely considers the assets that are of value to a medical organization, going beyond the medical device itself. Finally, our incorporation of risk scenarios into the framework represents a novel approach to medical device risk assessment, which was synthesized from other well-known standards. To our knowledge, our research is the first to apply a quantified assessment framework to the problem area of healthcare cybersecurity and medical networked devices. We would conclude that a reduction in the uncertainty about the riskiness of the cybersecurity status of medical devices can be achieved using this framework

A Taxonomy of Virtualization Security Issues in Cloud Computing Environments

Objectives: To identify the main challenges and security issues of virtualization in cloud computing environments. It reviews the alleviation techniques for improving the security of cloud virtualization systems. Methods/ Statistical Analysis: Virtualization is a fundamental technology for cloud computing, and for this reason, any cloud vulnerabilities and threats affect virtualization. In this study, the systematic literature review is performed to find out the vulnerabilities and risks of virtualization in cloud computing and to identify threats, and attacks result from those vulnerabilities. Furthermore, we discover and analyze the effective mitigation techniques that are used to protect, secure, and manage virtualization environments. Findings: Thirty vulnerabilities are identified, explained, and classified into six proposed classes. Furthermore, fifteen main virtualization threats and attacks ar defined according to exploited vulnerabilities in a cloud environment. Application/Improvements: A set of common mitigation solutions are recognized and discovered to alleviate the virtualization security risks. These reviewed techniques are analyzed and evaluated according to five specified security criteria