An Efficient Key Management and Multi-Layered Security Framework for SCADA Systems

Abstract

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks play a vital role in industrial control systems. Industrial organizations perform operations remotely through SCADA systems to accelerate their processes. However, this enhancement in network capabilities comes at the cost of exposing the systems to cyber-attacks. Consequently, effective solutions are required to secure industrial infrastructure as cyber-attacks on SCADA systems can have severe financial and/or safety implications. Moreover, SCADA field devices are equipped with microcontrollers for processing information and have limited computational power and resources. This makes the deployment of sophisticated security features challenging. As a result, effective lightweight cryptography solutions are needed to strengthen the security of industrial plants against cyber threats. In this paper, we have proposed a multi-layered framework by combining both symmetric and asymmetric key cryptographic techniques to ensure high availability, integrity, confidentiality, authentication and scalability. Further, an efficient session key management mechanism is proposed by merging random number generation with a hashed message authentication code. Moreover, for each session, we have introduced three symmetric key cryptography techniques based on the concept of Vernam cipher and a pre-shared session key, namely, random prime number generator, prime counter, and hash chaining. The proposed scheme satisfies the SCADA requirements of real-time request response mechanism by supporting broadcast, multicast, and point to point communication.