CPS Resilience Research Publication (Article Sample)

CPS Resilience Research Publication
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CPS Resilience Research Publication
Since the advent of the internet, people have experienced positive changes in their daily lives, including transforming communication systems and data storage and access. However, the development of cyber physical systems has changed how people interact with engineered systems. Unlike other forms of innovations, cyber-physical systems are complex since they involve a combination of sensing, control, computation, and networking into physical infrastructure and objects. CPS also connects all the mentioned elements and the internet to facilitate easy and accurate operations. The advancement of cyber-physical systems promises to improve the world by enhancing systems, increasing responsiveness and precision, and enabling tech professionals to develop intelligent devices in transport and energy, healthcare and medicine, and environmental sustainability (Tierney & Bruneau, 2007). Therefore, it is essential to enhance the resilience of cyber-physical systems to enable systems and industrial infrastructures to recover quickly from challenges that affect their effectiveness. Some of the resilience metrics that should be assessed include the physical, information, cognitive, and social domains of cyber-physical systems.
As operational systems undergo developments and improvements, the need for stability has increased to enable organizations and individuals to restore their systems to their normal states after disturbances and failures. For instance, CPS resilience can enable an organization that has suffered a malicious attack to restore its systems from a stable to unstable state and resume operations within the shortest periods. Before introducing computerization in the control of physical processes, there were few concerns about malicious actions (Mittal & Tolk, 2019). However, computing resources to control physical processes have necessitated resilience in CPS to enable organizations and systems to evaluate and deal with malicious actions that affect different aspects of operations. The four types of resilience metrics will be discussed below to understand better how to build CPS resilience when using computerized systems to control processes.
Physical Resilience Metric
The physical resilience metric is one of the most critical CPS resilience metrics that determine the system's ability to recover from attacks and other interruptions that affect operations and decrease effectiveness. Digital systems used in different organizations are critical to the resilience of CPS since they determine the security of non-physical systems. Organizations that do not have adequate systems for protecting their physical device from authorized physical access suffer from recurrent attacks that reduce the effectiveness of processes and sometimes derail operations (Mittal & Tolk, 2019). Since most physical devices are located inside organizations, the main threat comes from within. Therefore, organizations build their resilience for their digital devices from within by installing security systems to ensure that only authorized individuals can access specific devices.
Before computer systems were widely used to control physical systems, there was a huge air gap between digital devices and the internet. Still, the gap has decreased, and individuals outside and within organizations can use internet solutions to access devices and infiltrate organizational information. Organizations can therefore increase their CPS physical resilience by using a combination of IoT and ICS security, such as encryption and restricting physical access to specific individuals. Organizations can ensure that ICS systems such as routers, switches, and computers are housed in different rooms and floors from employees to reduce the likelihood of infiltration (Januário et al., 2019). Resilience can also be increased by ensuring only certain employees have security passes for rooms housing devices. Internal policies can also increase CPS resilience for the physical metric; organizations with strong security cultures are less likely to suffer from internal attacks since employees understand the implications of tampering with physical devices. Organizations can also install physical monitoring to ensure that whenever an attack happens on a physical device, they can locate individuals who accessed the device rooms or physically accessed the digital devices.
Information Resilience Metric
Information is also a critical element in cyber-physical systems since it determines how effectively computerization is used to control processes. Organizations emphasize the importance of protecting their information security since it has become critical in countering data security threats (Olowononi et al., 2020). Social engineering is one of the top information security threats that affect cyber-physical systems; it occurs when hackers manipulate particular security systems to disclose security information or skip security measures. Phishing attempts are strategies that attackers use to manipulate security systems and gain access to confidential information. Organizations are therefore boosting their CPS resilience by focusing on their information security.
Organizations are also developing CPS resilience by protecting their systems against ransomware used to gain access to computer systems. Attackers use special software to infect operational systems and force owners to pay ransom to be allowed to access information (Olowononi et al., 2020). When individuals fail to pay ransom to attackers, they can damage their reputations by exposing critical information or targeting financial systems. As a result, individuals and organizations are increasing CPS resilience by installing anti-ransomware protection and firewall systems to make it difficult for attackers to access operational systems and other information that may be used to damage reputation.
CPS Cognitive resilience
The cognitive aspect is essential for cyber-physical systems since it enables organizations to protect autonomous systems and improve the effectiveness of using computerization to control physical processes. One of the industries that have boosted the cognitive aspect of CPS and improved the overall resilience is the self-driving cars industry and other industries that depend on artificial intelligence to boost autonomy. Systems must build resilience for CPS since it can lead to the rejection of autonomous technology and its use in physical systems. Therefore, organizations are developing software that can detect issues in autonomous systems and lead to weaknesses that can allow attackers to attack self-driving vehicles and other autonomous machines remotely. Companies are also using diagnostic applications that can alert system administrators when individuals are trying to access systems remotely or tamper with specific systems used to control autonomous machines.
CPS Social Metric
The society also determines the resilience of CPS systems since most people's lives are dependent on computers and physical systems. People store sensitive information on their computers, including personal contacts and financial information. Society has also trusted computer systems and their ability to control physical systems for communication in the personal and organizational realm (Haque et al., 2019). To build resilience and protect the personal information stored in computer systems, governments teach citizens the importance of protecting computer systems through applications and security systems to avoid losing personal information or financial data. Also, private organizations have been conducting awareness campaigns to prepare society for cyber-attacks and different strategies for protecting cyber-physical systems.
R4 Framework for Disaster Resilience
Robustness is one of the R4 frameworks that enable organizations to boot resilience for cyber-physical systems; it is the degree to which computer systems that control physical components can work when attackers are trying to use invalid inputs. Therefore, organizations and individuals are enhancing the capabilities of CPS using reliable software that detects any attempts to infiltrate the system and allows them to continue operating optimally. For example, timed input and output dynamic In addition, organizations are using simulations to predict attacks or other issues that can cause weaknesses when cyber-physical systems are in action. The simulations also allow cybercrime specialists to predict when attacks occur and develop new protection strategies as part of resilience.
Redundancy is also a critical metric that determines how well computerization can be used to control physical processes; it is the likelihood of computer systems and applications becoming useless since they are more that is needed to be effective. Information can also be partly redundant due to dynamic processes that occur in the system or due to design failures and weaknesses when developing computer systems (Macaulay & Singer, 2016). IT specialists build resilience to deal with redundancy by engineering information processing to increase their robustness when dealing with sensor failures. Information technology specialists are also developing systems that boost CPS resilience against redundancy by combining different computer functionalities into one robust system and ensuring that one or two functionalities do not weaken a system or reduce its effectiveness.
Resourcefulness is a critical metric in cyber-physical systems that enables organizations to control physical pr...