A Semantic Framework with Humans in the Loop for Vulnerability-Assessment in Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Abstract

Critical manufacturing processes in smart networked systems such as Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPSs) typically require guaranteed quality-of-service performances, which is supported by cyber-security management. Currently, most existing vulnerability-assessment techniques mostly rely on only the security department due to limited communication between different working groups. This poses a limitation to the security management of CPPSs, as malicious operations may use new exploits that occur between successive analysis milestones or across departmental managerial boundaries. Thus, it is important to study and analyse CPPS networks’ security, in terms of vulnerability analysis that accounts for humans in the production process loop, to prevent potential threats to infiltrate through cross-layer gaps and to reduce the magnitude of their impact. We propose a semantic framework that supports the collaboration between different actors in the production process, to improve situation awareness for cyberthreats prevention. Stakeholders with different expertise are contributing to vulnerability assessment, which can be further combined with attack-scenario analysis to provide more practical analysis. In doing so, we show through a case study evaluation how our proposed framework leverages crucial relationships between vulnerabilities, threats and attacks, in order to narrow further the risk-window induced by discoverable vulnerabilities.

This research has been supported in part by the EU ISF Project A431.678/2016 ELVIRA (Threat modeling and resilience of critical infrastructures), coordinated by Polismyndigheten/Sweden.