Assessing and augmenting SCADA cyber security: a survey of techniques

SCADA systems monitor and control critical infrastructures of national importance such as power generation and distribution, water supply, transportation networks, and manufacturing facilities. The pervasiveness, miniaturisations and declining costs of internet connectivity have transformed these systems from strictly isolated to highly interconnected networks. The connectivity provides immense benefits such as reliability, scalability and remote connectivity, but at the same time exposes an otherwise isolated and secure system, to global cyber security threats. This inevitable transformation to highly connected systems thus necessitates effective security safeguards to be in place as any compromise or downtime of SCADA systems can have severe economic, safety and security ramifications. One way to ensure vital asset protection is to adopt a viewpoint similar to an attacker to determine weaknesses and loopholes in defences. Such mind sets help to identify and fix potential breaches before their exploitation. This paper surveys tools and techniques to uncover SCADA system vulnerabilities. A comprehensive review of the selected approaches is provided along with their applicability

How to recognise a kick : A cognitive task analysis of drillers’ situation awareness during well operations

Acknowledgements This article is based on a doctoral research project of the first author which was sponsored by an international drilling rig operator. The views presented are those of the authors and should not be taken to represent the position or policy of the sponsor. The authors wish to thank the industrial supervisor and the drilling experts for their contribution and patience, as well as Aberdeen Drilling School for allowing the first author to attend one of their well control courses.Peer reviewedPostprin

Sensitivity Analysis for a Scenario-Based Reliability Prediction Model

As a popular means for capturing behavioural requirements, scenariosshow how components interact to provide system-level functionality.If component reliability information is available, scenarioscan be used to perform early system reliability assessment. Inprevious work we presented an automated approach for predictingsoftware system reliability that extends a scenario specificationto model (1) the probability of component failure, and (2) scenariotransition probabilities. Probabilistic behaviour models ofthe system are then synthesized from the extended scenario specification.From the system behaviour model, reliability predictioncan be computed. This paper complements our previous work andpresents a sensitivity analysis that supports reasoning about howcomponent reliability and usage profiles impact on the overall systemreliability. For this purpose, we present how the system reliabilityvaries as a function of the components reliabilities and thescenario transition probabilities. Taking into account the concurrentnature of component-based software systems, we also analysethe effect of implied scenarios prevention into the sensitivity analysisof our reliability prediction technique