The security challenges in the IoT enabled cyber-physical systems and opportunities for evolutionary computing & other computational intelligence

Internet of Things (IoT) has given rise to the fourth industrial revolution (Industrie 4.0), and it brings great benefits by connecting people, processes and data. However, cybersecurity has become a critical challenge in the IoT enabled cyber physical systems, from connected supply chain, Big Data produced by huge amount of IoT devices, to industry control systems. Evolutionary computation combining with other computational intelligence will play an important role for cybersecurity, such as artificial immune mechanism for IoT security architecture, data mining/fusion in IoT enabled cyber physical systems, and data driven cybersecurity. This paper provides an overview of security challenges in IoT enabled cyber-physical systems and what evolutionary computation and other computational intelligence technology could contribute for the challenges. The overview could provide clues and guidance for research in IoT security with computational intelligence

Detection of cyber-attacks in systems with distributed control based on support vector regression

Concept of Industry 4.0 and implementation of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial plants are changing the way we manufacture. Introduction of industrial IoT leads to ubiquitous communication (usually wireless) between devices in industrial control systems, thus introducing numerous security concerns and opening up wide space for potential malicious threats and attacks. As a consequence of various cyber-attacks, fatal failures can occur on system parts or the system as a whole. Therefore, security mechanisms must be developed to provide sufficient resilience to cyber-attacks and keep the system safe and protected. In this paper we present a method for detection of attacks on sensor signals, based on e insensitive support vector regression (e-SVR). The method is implemented on publicly available data obtained from Secure Water Treatment (SWaT) testbed as well as on a real-world continuous time controlled electro-pneumatic positioning system. In both cases, the method successfully detected all considered attacks (without false positives)

Detection of cyber-attacks in systems with distributed control based on support vector regression

Concept of Industry 4.0 and implementation of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial plants are changing the way we manufacture. Introduction of industrial IoT leads to ubiquitous communication (usually wireless) between devices in industrial control systems, thus introducing numerous security concerns and opening up wide space for potential malicious threats and attacks. As a consequence of various cyber-attacks, fatal failures can occur on system parts or the system as a whole. Therefore, security mechanisms must be developed to provide sufficient resilience to cyber-attacks and keep the system safe and protected. In this paper we present a method for detection of attacks on sensor signals, based on e insensitive support vector regression (e-SVR). The method is implemented on publicly available data obtained from Secure Water Treatment (SWaT) testbed as well as on a real-world continuous time controlled electro-pneumatic positioning system. In both cases, the method successfully detected all considered attacks (without false positives)

Preliminary Analysis of Cyberterrorism Threats to Internet of Things (IoT) Applications

The era of Internet of Things (IoT) being a combination of various networking and computing technologies already in a state of growth that introduces a new age of data aggregation mechanism and ubiquitous connectivity among physical objects. However, the most of the cyber threats still remain unsolved and may create huge impact on our lives. One of the possible major changes in impact landscape is the imminent physical results of cyber threats as IoT technologies enable closer interactions between humans and information systems. Although the cyber threats to critical infrastructures have been highly considered by the cyber security community, the cases with catastrophic physical impacts are rare which means the impact posture has not exactly shifted from information centric impacts to physical ones. However, widespread usage of IoT technologies have the potential to accelerate this shift which may bring the threat of cyber terrorism into the picture. This paper provides a preliminary comparison of a typical IoT application in health area with an industrial control system (ICS) in order to show that IoT applications are required to be deeply assessed as terrorists may attack them with easy-to implement cyberattacks for the purpose of creating physical harm

The industrial internet of things (IIoT) : an analysis framework

Historically, Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) were largely isolated from conventional digital networks such as enterprise ICT environments. Where connectivity was required, a zoned architecture was adopted, with firewalls and/or demilitarized zones used to protect the core control system components. The adoption and deployment of ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) technologies is leading to architectural changes to IACS, including greater connectivity to industrial systems. This paper reviews what is meant by Industrial IoT (IIoT) and relationships to concepts such as cyber-physical systems and Industry 4.0. The paper develops a definition of IIoT and analyses related partial IoT taxonomies. It develops an analysis framework for IIoT that can be used to enumerate and characterise IIoT devices when studying system architectures and analysing security threats and vulnerabilities. The paper concludes by identifying some gaps in the literature

Review of SCADA systems and IoT honeypots

Internet of Things (IoT) is a massive technology that is being improved day by day. It connects different types of devices to the internet so that they can interchange data. The most feild that has been improved by implementing IoT’s technology is Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems, or Industrial Control Systems (ICS). The application of these systems is to be used in controlling different elements that is connected to it (sensors, devices, and machines). However, connecting different types of devices of different physical circuitry and different communication technology, together raises various security issues that has been a place of concern for years. A famous technique that has been implemented in the field of security to further study Cyber Attacks, its causes, and effects is Honeypots. The Aim from this paper is to categorize Cyber -physical attacks and their effects, study SCADA/ICS systems’ architecture, highlight its security weaknesses, and how Cyber/Physical attacks make use of these weaknesses. Finally, a break down Honeypots and understand its implementation and effectiveness in the Field of Cyber Security

On-device Security and Privacy Mechanisms for Resource-limited Devices: A Bottom-up Approach

This doctoral dissertation introduces novel mechanisms to provide on-device security and privacy for resource-limited smart devices and their applications. These mechanisms aim to cover five fundamental contributions in the emerging Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), and Industrial IoT (IIoT) fields. First, we present a host-based fingerprinting solution for device identification that is complementary to other security services like device authentication and access control. Then, we design a kernel- and user-level detection framework that aims to discover compromised resource-limited devices based on behavioral analysis. Further we apply dynamic analysis of smart devices’ applications to uncover security and privacy risks in real-time. Then, we describe a solution to enable digital forensics analysis on data extracted from interconnected resource-limited devices that form a smart environment. Finally, we offer to researchers from industry and academia a collection of benchmark solutions for the evaluation of the discussed security mechanisms on different smart domains. For each contribution, this dissertation comprises specific novel tools and techniques that can be applied either independently or combined to enable a broader security services for the CPS, IoT, and IIoT domains

Dynamic real-time risk analytics of uncontrollable states in complex internet of things systems, cyber risk at the edge

The Internet of Things (IoT) triggers new types of cyber risks. Therefore, the integration of new IoT devices and services requires a self-assessment of IoT cyber security posture. By security posture this article refers to the cybersecurity strength of an organisation to predict, prevent and respond to cyberthreats. At present, there is a gap in the state of the art, because there are no self-assessment methods for quantifying IoT cyber risk posture. To address this gap, an empirical analysis is performed of 12 cyber risk assessment approaches. The results and the main findings from the analysis is presented as the current and a target risk state for IoT systems, followed by conclusions and recommendations on a transformation roadmap, describing how IoT systems can achieve the target state with a new goal-oriented dependency model. By target state, we refer to the cyber security target that matches the generic security requirements of an organisation. The research paper studies and adapts four alternatives for IoT risk assessment and identifies the goal-oriented dependency modelling as a dominant approach among the risk assessment models studied. The new goal-oriented dependency model in this article enables the assessment of uncontrollable risk states in complex IoT systems and can be used for a quantitative self-assessment of IoT cyber risk posture

Securing the Participation of Safety-Critical SCADA Systems in the Industrial Internet of Things

In the past, industrial control systems were ‘air gapped’ and isolated from more conventional networks. They used specialist protocols, such as Modbus, that are very different from TCP/IP. Individual devices used proprietary operating systems rather than the more familiar Linux or Windows. However, things are changing. There is a move for greater connectivity – for instance so that higher-level enterprise management systems can exchange information that helps optimise production processes. At the same time, industrial systems have been influenced by concepts from the Internet of Things; where the information derived from sensors and actuators in domestic and industrial components can be addressed through network interfaces. This paper identifies a range of cyber security and safety concerns that arise from these developments. The closing sections introduce potential solutions and identify areas for future research