Improving cyber security in industrial control system environment.

Integrating industrial control system (ICS) with information technology (IT) and internet technologies has made industrial control system environments (ICSEs) more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Increased connectivity has brought about increased security threats, vulnerabilities, and risks in both technology and people (human) constituents of the ICSE. Regardless of existing security solutions which are chiefly tailored towards technical dimensions, cyber-attacks on ICSEs continue to increase with a proportionate level of consequences and impacts. These consequences include system failures or breakdowns, likewise affecting the operations of dependent systems. Impacts often include; marring physical safety, triggering loss of lives, causing huge economic damages, and thwarting the vital missions of productions and businesses. This thesis addresses uncharted solution paths to the above challenges by investigating both technical and human-factor security evaluations to improve cyber security in the ICSE. An ICS testbed, scenario-based, and expert opinion approaches are used to demonstrate and validate cyber-attack feasibility scenarios. To improve security of ICSs, the research provides: (i) an adaptive operational security metrics generation (OSMG) framework for generating suitable security metrics for security evaluations in ICSEs, and a list of good security metrics methodology characteristics (scope-definitive, objective-oriented, reliable, simple, adaptable, and repeatable), (ii) a technical multi-attribute vulnerability (and impact) assessment (MAVCA) methodology that considers and combines dynamic metrics (temporal and environmental) attributes of vulnerabilities with the functional dependency relationship attributes of the vulnerability host components, to achieve a better representation of exploitation impacts on ICSE networks, (iii) a quantitative human-factor security (capability and vulnerability) evaluation model based on human-agent security knowledge and skills, used to identify the most vulnerable human elements, identify the least security aspects of the general workforce, and prioritise security enhancement efforts, and (iv) security risk reduction through critical impact point assessment (S2R-CIPA) process model that demonstrates the combination of technical and human-factor security evaluations to mitigate risks and achieve ICSE-wide security enhancements. The approaches or models of cyber-attack feasibility testing, adaptive security metrication, multi-attribute impact analysis, and workforce security capability evaluations can support security auditors, analysts, managers, and system owners of ICSs to create security strategies and improve cyber incidence response, and thus effectively reduce security risk.PhD in Manufacturin

Intrusion Tolerant Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

This MSc thesis is focused in the study, solution proposal and experimental evaluation of security solutions for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The objectives are centered on intrusion tolerant routing services, adapted for the characteristics and requirements of WSN nodes and operation behavior. The main contribution addresses the establishment of pro-active intrusion tolerance properties at the network level, as security mechanisms for the proposal of a reliable and secure routing protocol. Those properties and mechanisms will augment a secure communication base layer supported by light-weigh cryptography methods, to improve the global network resilience capabilities against possible intrusion-attacks on the WSN nodes. Adapting to WSN characteristics, the design of the intended security services also pushes complexity away from resource-poor sensor nodes towards resource-rich and trustable base stations. The devised solution will construct, securely and efficiently, a secure tree-structured routing service for data-dissemination in large scale deployed WSNs. The purpose is to tolerate the damage caused by adversaries modeled according with the Dolev-Yao threat model and ISO X.800 attack typology and framework, or intruders that can compromise maliciously the deployed sensor nodes, injecting, modifying, or blocking packets, jeopardizing the correct behavior of internal network routing processing and topology management. The proposed enhanced mechanisms, as well as the design and implementation of a new intrusiontolerant routing protocol for a large scale WSN are evaluated by simulation. For this purpose, the evaluation is based on a rich simulation environment, modeling networks from hundreds to tens of thousands of wireless sensors, analyzing different dimensions: connectivity conditions, degree-distribution patterns, latency and average short-paths, clustering, reliability metrics and energy cost

Enterprise information security policy assessment - an extended framework for metrics development utilising the goal-question-metric approach

Effective enterprise information security policy management requires review and assessment activities to ensure information security policies are aligned with business goals and objectives. As security policy management involves the elements of policy development process and the security policy as output, the context for security policy assessment requires goal-based metrics for these two elements. However, the current security management assessment methods only provide checklist types of assessment that are predefined by industry best practices and do not allow for developing specific goal-based metrics. Utilizing theories drawn from literature, this paper proposes the Enterprise Information Security Policy Assessment approach that expands on the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) approach. The proposed assessment approach is then applied in a case scenario example to illustrate a practical application. It is shown that the proposed framework addresses the requirement for developing assessment metrics and allows for the concurrent undertaking of process-based and product-based assessment. Recommendations for further research activities include the conduct of empirical research to validate the propositions and the practical application of the proposed assessment approach in case studies to provide opportunities to introduce further enhancements to the approach

Estimating Impact and Frequency of Risks to Safety and Mission Critical Systems Using CVSS

Many safety and mission critical systems depend on the correct and secure operation of both supportive and core software systems. E.g., both the safety of personnel and the effective execution of core missions on an oil platform depend on the correct recording storing, transfer and interpretation of data, such as that for the Logging While Drilling (LWD) and Measurement While Drilling (MWD) subsystems. Here, data is recorded on site, packaged and then transferred to an on-shore operational centre. Today, the data is transferred on dedicated communication channels to ensure a secure and safe transfer, free from deliberately and accidental faults. However, as the cost control is ever more important some of the transfer will be over remotely accessible infrastructure in the future. Thus, communication will be prone to known security vulnerabilities exploitable by outsiders. This paper presents a model that estimates risk level of known vulnerabilities as a combination of frequency and impact estimates derived from the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). The model is implemented as a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN)

SecMon: End-to-End Quality and Security Monitoring System

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is becoming a more available and popular way of communicating for Internet users. This also applies to Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems and merging these two have already proven to be successful (e.g. Skype). Even the existing standards of VoIP provide an assurance of security and Quality of Service (QoS), however, these features are usually optional and supported by limited number of implementations. As a result, the lack of mandatory and widely applicable QoS and security guaranties makes the contemporary VoIP systems vulnerable to attacks and network disturbances. In this paper we are facing these issues and propose the SecMon system, which simultaneously provides a lightweight security mechanism and improves quality parameters of the call. SecMon is intended specially for VoIP service over P2P networks and its main advantage is that it provides authentication, data integrity services, adaptive QoS and (D)DoS attack detection. Moreover, the SecMon approach represents a low-bandwidth consumption solution that is transparent to the users and possesses a self-organizing capability. The above-mentioned features are accomplished mainly by utilizing two information hiding techniques: digital audio watermarking and network steganography. These techniques are used to create covert channels that serve as transport channels for lightweight QoS measurement's results. Furthermore, these metrics are aggregated in a reputation system that enables best route path selection in the P2P network. The reputation system helps also to mitigate (D)DoS attacks, maximize performance and increase transmission efficiency in the network.Comment: Paper was presented at 7th international conference IBIZA 2008: On Computer Science - Research And Applications, Poland, Kazimierz Dolny 31.01-2.02 2008; 14 pages, 5 figure