ELEGANT

Description

The security of Essential Systems and Critical Infrastructures relies on control devices such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), which interact with the physical processes under control. Besides security, monitoring of the operations of the physical devices is crucial for fault and anomaly detection in Industrial Automation Control Systems (IACS). Devices such as the Shadow Security Units (SSU) have been developed in the ATENA H2020 project1 to work as monitoring probe units to directly observe inputs and outputs of control devices, in particular network communications, and/or analog and digital outputs. In this regard, SSU are able to collect large volumes of data for anomaly detection and enhanced security analysis (e.g. detect zero-day vulnerabilities). A proof-of-concept SSU was built and validated for SCADA systems2, considering anomaly- 3 based intrusion detection mechanisms previously validated for IoT . Digital twins (DTs) are an emerging paradigm, designed to monitor and protect cyber physical systems. Since the correction of security issues in such systems is a time-consuming task and does not guarantee protection to undisclosed vulnerabilities, DTs emerge as a viable approach to increase quality control, efficiency and security. In this case, the digital replicas provided by DTs are employed for security and operational monitoring purposes of the physical components of a system. The Enabling Security with Digital Twins Units (ELEGANT) project aims to validate the use of SSU units at large scale, with particular focus on the communication stream analysis and learning components to enable efficient digital replication of critical systems through DTs. The validation and enhancement of SSU towards full cooperation with Digital Twins, aims to enable higher protection and to enhance the security of critical systems.

Researchers

Funded by

Fed4FIRE+ Open Call

Partners

UC

Total budget

94 886,00 €

Local budget

94 886,00 €

Keywords

IoT;ICS;Digital twins

Start Date

2020-05-01

End Date

2021-02-28