An analysis of security issues in building automation systems

The purpose of Building Automation Systems (BAS) is to centralise the management of a wide range of building services, through the use of integrated protocol and communication media. Through the use of IP-based communication and encapsulated protocols, BAS are increasingly being connected to corporate networks and also being remotely accessed for management purposes, both for convenience and emergency purposes. These protocols, however, were not designed with security as a primary requirement, thus the majority of systems operate with sub-standard or non-existent security implementations, relying on security through obscurity. Research has been undertaken into addressing the shortfalls of security implementations in BAS, however defining the threats against BAS, and detection of these threats is an area that is particularly lacking. This paper presents an overview of the current security measures in BAS, outlining key issues, and methods that can be improved to protect cyber physical systems against the increasing threat of cyber terrorism and hacktivism. Future research aims to further evaluate and improve the detection systems used in BAS through first defining the threats and then applying and evaluating machine learning algorithms for traffic classification and IDS profiling capable of operating on resource constrained BAS

An analysis of security issues in building automation systems

The purpose of Building Automation Systems (BAS) is to centralise the management of a wide range of building services, through the use of integrated protocol and communication media. Through the use of IP-based communication and encapsulated protocols, BAS are increasingly being connected to corporate networks and also being remotely accessed for management purposes, both for convenience and emergency purposes. These protocols, however, were not designed with security as a primary requirement, thus the majority of systems operate with sub-standard or non-existent security implementations, relying on security through obscurity. Research has been undertaken into addressing the shortfalls of security implementations in BAS, however defining the threats against BAS, and detection of these threats is an area that is particularly lacking. This paper presents an overview of the current security measures in BAS, outlining key issues, and methods that can be improved to protect cyber physical systems against the increasing threat of cyber terrorism and hacktivism. Future research aims to further evaluate and improve the detection systems used in BAS through first defining the threats and then applying and evaluating machine learning algorithms for traffic classification and IDS profiling capable of operating on resource constrained BAS

Adaptive Process Management in Cyber-Physical Domains

The increasing application of process-oriented approaches in new challenging cyber-physical domains beyond business computing (e.g., personalized healthcare, emergency management, factories of the future, home automation, etc.) has led to reconsider the level of flexibility and support required to manage complex processes in such domains. A cyber-physical domain is characterized by the presence of a cyber-physical system coordinating heterogeneous ICT components (PCs, smartphones, sensors, actuators) and involving real world entities (humans, machines, agents, robots, etc.) that perform complex tasks in the “physical” real world to achieve a common goal. The physical world, however, is not entirely predictable, and processes enacted in cyber-physical domains must be robust to unexpected conditions and adaptable to unanticipated exceptions. This demands a more flexible approach in process design and enactment, recognizing that in real-world environments it is not adequate to assume that all possible recovery activities can be predefined for dealing with the exceptions that can ensue. In this chapter, we tackle the above issue and we propose a general approach, a concrete framework and a process management system implementation, called SmartPM, for automatically adapting processes enacted in cyber-physical domains in case of unanticipated exceptions and exogenous events. The adaptation mechanism provided by SmartPM is based on declarative task specifications, execution monitoring for detecting failures and context changes at run-time, and automated planning techniques to self-repair the running process, without requiring to predefine any specific adaptation policy or exception handler at design-time

Multi-Layer Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience for Smart Grid

The smart grid is a large-scale complex system that integrates communication technologies with the physical layer operation of the energy systems. Security and resilience mechanisms by design are important to provide guarantee operations for the system. This chapter provides a layered perspective of the smart grid security and discusses game and decision theory as a tool to model the interactions among system components and the interaction between attackers and the system. We discuss game-theoretic applications and challenges in the design of cross-layer robust and resilient controller, secure network routing protocol at the data communication and networking layers, and the challenges of the information security at the management layer of the grid. The chapter will discuss the future directions of using game-theoretic tools in addressing multi-layer security issues in the smart grid.Comment: 16 page

Impact Assessment of Hypothesized Cyberattacks on Interconnected Bulk Power Systems

The first-ever Ukraine cyberattack on power grid has proven its devastation by hacking into their critical cyber assets. With administrative privileges accessing substation networks/local control centers, one intelligent way of coordinated cyberattacks is to execute a series of disruptive switching executions on multiple substations using compromised supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. These actions can cause significant impacts to an interconnected power grid. Unlike the previous power blackouts, such high-impact initiating events can aggravate operating conditions, initiating instability that may lead to system-wide cascading failure. A systemic evaluation of "nightmare" scenarios is highly desirable for asset owners to manage and prioritize the maintenance and investment in protecting their cyberinfrastructure. This survey paper is a conceptual expansion of real-time monitoring, anomaly detection, impact analyses, and mitigation (RAIM) framework that emphasizes on the resulting impacts, both on steady-state and dynamic aspects of power system stability. Hypothetically, we associate the combinatorial analyses of steady state on substations/components outages and dynamics of the sequential switching orders as part of the permutation. The expanded framework includes (1) critical/noncritical combination verification, (2) cascade confirmation, and (3) combination re-evaluation. This paper ends with a discussion of the open issues for metrics and future design pertaining the impact quantification of cyber-related contingencies