A large body of research has been dedicated to the analysis, assessment and protection of cyberphysical systems and critical infrastructures against potential threats that might affect the dependability, the security or the resilience of the services delivered to the users. Traditionally, accidental and malicious threats have been taken into account separately. In this talk we will address the challenges raised by the resilience assessment and analysis of such systems considering accidental and malicious threats in an integrated way and we will present some examples of research studies carried out in this context.
1. SUMMARY
In the past decade, several concerns have been
raised about the vulnerability of critical
infrastructures and cyber-physical systems and
their efficient protection in the presence of
accidental and malicious threats
Historically, most of the efforts were dedicated to
the protection of critical infrastructures against
accidental faults and natural disasters with a
specific focus on safety. The situation changed
significantly after the September 11, 2001 tragic
events that led to increased international concerns
about the security and robustness of critical
infrastructures in response to evolving malicious
threats
The vulnerability of critical infrastructures has
increased as a result of the wider use of open
networks and information infrastructures, and the
proliferation of vulnerable operating systems and
control devices. Recent events targeting critical
infrastructures show that the threat is real. A widely
reported example is the Stuxnet sophisticated
malware discovered in July 2010 that targeted
specific industrial computer control equipment and
software, used for instance in nuclear power plants
in Iran [
A large body of research has been dedicated to the analysis, assessment and protection of cyberphysical systems and critical infrastructures against potential threats that might affect the dependability, the security or the resilience of the services delivered to the users. The resilience term is used differently, by different communities. It is defined in (Laprie 2011) as the persistence of service delivery that can justifiably be trusted, when facing changes.
Traditionally, accidental and malicious threats have been taken into account separately. In this talk we will address the challenges raised by the resilience assessment and analysis of such systems considering accidental and malicious threats in an integrated way and we will present some examples of research studies carried out in this context. In particular this objective has been addressed in the context of the CRUTIAL project (http://crutial.rse-web.it/) considering the example of power grid critical infrastructures and the associated information infrastructures dedicated to their management and control.
CRUTIAL focussed on the failures resulting from interdependencies between these infrastructures. The characterization of such failures and the modelling of their impact on relevant properties of power systems have been investigated by means of models at different abstraction levels: i) from a very abstract view expressing the essence of the typical phenomena due to the presence of interdependencies, ii) to an intermediate detail level representing in a rather abstract way the structure of the infrastructures, in some scenarios of interest, iii) to a quite detailed level where the infrastructures components and their interactions are investigated at a finer grain, considering elementary events occurring at the components level and analysing their impact at the system level.
Accordingly, the proposed resilience assessment
framework
His research addresses the dependability and security assessment of hardware and software fault tolerant computer systems and critical infrastructures, using analytical modelling and experimental measurement techniques.
He has been involved in several national and European research projects and acted as a consultant for companies in France and as an expert for the European Commission. He has served on program and organization committees of international dependability related conferences. He was Program Chair of PRDC-2004, EDCC-5, DSNPDS 2010, LADC-2011 and SAFECOMP- 2013. He is General co-Chair of DSN-2016 that will be held in Toulouse, France in June 2016.