Research Outputs
Towards a Security Baseline for IaaS-Cloud Back-Ends in Industry 4.0
The popularity of cloud based Infrastructure-as-a- Service (IaaS) solutions is becoming increasingly popular. However, since IaaS providers and customers interact in a flexible and scalable environment, security remains a serious concern. To handle such security issues, defining a set of security parameters in the service level agreements (SLA) between both, IaaS provider and customer, is of utmost importance. In this paper, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) guidelines are evaluated to extract a set of security parameters for IaaS. Furthermore, the level of applicability and implementation of this set is used to assess popular industrial and open-source IaaS cloud platforms, respectively VMware and OpenStack. Both platforms provide private clouds, used as backend infrastructures in Industry 4.0 application scenarios. The results serve as initial work to identify a security baseline and research needs for creating secure cloud environments for Industry 4.0.
Towards flexible and secure end-to-end communication in industry 4.0
The digital transformation of industrial production is driven by the advance of cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) within which raw materials, machines and operations are interconnected to form a sophisticated network. Making such systems self-adaptable is a priority concern for the future implementation of Industry 4.0 application scenarios. In this position paper, we design a meta-model and use it as a tool to describe an end-to-end communication use case from an ongoing research project. Based on this use case we develop a business process performance and security trade-off model, which shows that maximazing both parameters at the same time is not possible, thus an efficient balance between them has to be achieved. Motivated by the result, we propose self adaptation as a solution towards a flexible and secure end-to-end communication in Industry 4.0. To identify and document the self-adaptation points in a structured methodological and lightweight way we use the bespoken meta-model.
On the Cost of Security Compliance in Information Systems
The onward development of information and communication technology has led to a new industrial revolution called Industry 4.0. This revolution involves Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS), which consist of intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems that may be able to adapt themselves autonomously in a production environment. At the moment, machines in industrial environments are often not connected to the internet, which thus needs a point-to-point connection to access the device if necessary. Through Industry 4.0, these devices should enable remote access for smart maintenance through a connection to the outside world. However, this connection opens the gate for possible cyber-attacks and thus raises the question about providing security for these environments. Therefore, this paper used an adapted approach based on SixSigma to solve this security problem by investigating security standards. Security requirements were gathered and mapped to controls from well known security standards, formed into a catalog. This catalog includes assessment information to check how secure a solution for a use case is and also includes a link to an estimation method for implementation cost. Thus this paper’s outcome shows how to make Industry 4.0 use cases secure by fulfilling security standard controls and how to estimate the resulting implementation costs.
Automated and Secure Onboarding for System of Systems
The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly changing the number of connected devices and the way they interact with each other. This increases the need for an automated and secure onboarding procedure for IoT devices, systems and services. Device manufacturers are entering the market with internet connected devices, ranging from small sensors to production devices, which are subject of security threats specific to IoT. The onboarding procedure is required to introduce a new device in a System of Systems (SoS) without compromising the already onboarded devices and the underlying infrastructure. Onboarding is the process of providing access to the network and registering the components for the first time in an IoT/SoS framework, thus creating a chain of trust from the hardware device to its hosted software systems and their provided services. The large number and diversity of device hardware, software systems and running services raises the challenge to establish a generic onboarding procedure. In this paper, we present an automated and secure onboarding procedure for SoS. We have implemented the onboarding procedure in the Eclipse Arrowhead framework. However, it can be easily adapted for other IoT/SoS frameworks that are based on Service-oriented Architecture (SoA) principles. The automated onboarding procedure ensures a secure and trusted communication between the new IoT devices and the Eclipse Arrowhead framework. We show its application in a smart charging use case and perform a security assessment.
Self-Adaptation Applied to MQTT via a Generic Autonomic Management Framework
Manufacturing enterprises are constantly exploring new ways to improve their own production processes to address the increasing demand of customized production. However, such enterprises show a low degree of flexibility, which mainly results from the need to configure new production equipment at design and run time. In this paper we propose self-adaptation as an approach to improve data transmission flexibility in Industry 4.0 environments. We implement an autonomic manager using a generic autonomic management framework, which applies the most appropriate data transmission configuration based on security and business process related requirements, such as performance. The experimental evaluation is carried out in a MQTT infrastructure and the results show that using self-adaptation can significantly improve the trade-off between security and performance. We then propose to integrate anomaly detection methods as a solution to support self-adaptation by monitoring and learning the normal behavior of an industrial system and show how this can be used by the generic autonomic management framework.
Generic Autonomic Management as a Service in a SOA-based Framework for Industry 4.0
Cyber-physical production systems are engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the seamless integration of computational algorithms and physical components. In order to make these systems interoperable with each other for addressing Industry 4.0 applications a number of service-oriented architecture frameworks are developed. Such frameworks are composed by a number of services, which are inherently dynamic by nature and thus imply the need for self-adaptation. In this paper we propose generic autonomic management as a service and show how it can be integrated in the Arrowhead framework. We propose generic and reusable interfaces for each phase of the autonomic control loop in order to increase the usability of the service for other frameworks and application systems, while reducing the software engineering effort. To show the utility of our approach in the Arrowhead framework we use a climate control application as a representative example.
A Lightweight Authentication Mechanism for M2M Communications in Industrial IoT Environment
In the emerging industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) era, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication technology is considered as a key underlying technology for building IIoT environments, where devices (e.g., sensors, actuators, and gateways) are enabled to exchange information with each other in an autonomous way without human intervention. However, most of the existing M2M protocols that can be also used in the IIoT domain provide security mechanisms based on asymmetric cryptography resulting in high computational cost. As a consequence, the resource-constrained IoT devices are not able to support them appropriately and thus, many security issues arise for the IIoT environment. Therefore, lightweight security mechanisms are required for M2M communications in IIoT in order to reach its full potential. As a step toward this direction, in this paper, we propose a lightweight authentication mechanism, based only on hash and XOR operations, for M2M communications in IIoT environment. The proposed mechanism is characterized by low computational cost, communication, and storage overhead, while achieving mutual authentication, session key agreement, device's identity confidentiality, and resistance against the following attacks: replay attack, man-in-the-middle attack, impersonation attack, and modification attack.
Connected cars — Threats, vulnerabilities and their impact
The growing demand for interoperability between system components within a connected car has led to new security challenges in automotive development. The existing components, based on established technology, are often being combined to form such a connected car. For such established technologies, individual, often sector specific threat and vulnerability catalogs exist. The aim of this paper is to identify blocks of established technologies in a connected car and to consolidate the corresponding threat and vulnerability catalogs relevant for the individual constituent components. These findings are used to estimate the impact on specific system components and subsystems to identify the most crucial components and threats.
Impact of Critical Infrastructure Requirements on Service Migration Guidelines to the Cloud
A high level of information security in critical infrastructure IT systems and services has to be preserved when migrating their IT services to the cloud. Often various legislative and security constraints have to be met in line with best practice guidelines and international standards to perform the migration. To support the critical infrastructure providers in migrating their services to the cloud we are developing a process based migration guideline for critical infrastructure providers focusing on information security. First of all we investigate, via questionnaires, how the importance of individual security topics covered in such guidelines differentiates between industry stakeholders and critical infrastructure providers. This supports the selection of relevant security topics and the considered guidelines and standards, which we survey in search for common relevant security topics. Subsequently we present the analysis of the above-mentioned security requirements and how they affect a here developed taxonomy for a process-based security guideline. Furthermore we present potential service migration use cases and how our methodology would affect the migration of secure critical infrastructure services.
Towards Resilience Metrics for Future Cloud Applications
An analysis of new technologies can yield insight into the way these technologies will be used. Inevitably, new technologies and their uses are likely to result in new security issues regarding threats, vulnerabilities and attack vectors. In this paper, we investigate and analyse technological and security trends and their potential to become future threats by systematically examining industry reports on existing technologies. Using a cloud computing use case we identify potential resilience metrics that can shed light on the security properties of the system.