Leveraging Virtualization Technologies to Improve SCADA ICS Security

Authors

Abstract

In recent years, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Industrial Control Systems (ICS)—systems used for controlling industrial processes, power plants, or assembly lines—have become a serious concern because of security and manageability issues. While the introduction of virtualization technologies has been instrumental in helping ICT infrastructures deal with such problems, their adoption in the ICS domain has been slow, despite recent developments such as the introduction of hypervisors or software-defined networking. This paper provides an overview of the usage of such technologies to improve SCADA ICS security and reliability; it also proposes advanced use cases.

Keywords

Virtualization, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Industrial Control Systems

Subject

Critical Infrastructure Protection

Related Project

H2020 ATENA (Advanced Tools to assEss and mitigate the criticality of ICT compoNents and their dependencies over Critical InfrAstructures)

Journal

Journal of Information Warfare. Vol. 15, No. 3 (2016), pp. 81-100 - ISSN 1445-3312 (print)/ISSN 1445-334, Vol. 15, #3, Dr Leigh Armistead, October 2016

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DOI