Industrial cyber-physical systems protection: A methodological review

Abstract

Ubiquitous utilization of Information and Communication Technologies in modern manufacturing plants has transformed them into Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), making them susceptible to cyber-attacks, which can have huge economic and social impact.In this paper, we focus on the security issues that may affect the Industrial Control System (ICS) supervising an industrial establishment. The purpose of this work is to provide readers with an up-to-date view of the methodologies that current literature suggests as the most appropriate to defend an ICS against cyber-attacks. We firstly provide a classification of existing attacks according to the methodology used by the attacker. Subsequently, we propose a classification of defensive countermeasures in Model and Artificial Intelligence-based approaches by analyzing most recent research contributions. Furthermore, we describe the most used datasets in literature that are available to researchers and practitioners. We conclude the paper by discussing today's open issues, which need to be addressed to cope with the increasing complexity of ICS security.