Critical National Infrastructure Research Articles

A Strategic Framework for a Secure Cyberspace in Developing Countries with Special Emphasis on the Risk of Cyber Warfare

The objective of this paper is to provide a strategic framework for a secure cyberspace in developing countries, taking cognisance of the realities and constraints within a developing milieu; and to discuss if the risk of cyber warfare and related techniques against developing countries should be addressed within ‘The Framework'. Cybersecurity policies and related strategies are required for developing countries in order to effectively safeguard against cyber related threats (the same as for developed countries). These policies and strategies for developing countries will differ from those of developed countries due to the unique realities within a developing world. Africa in specific is presently seen as a hotbed for cybercrime, and one of the reasons is that many African countries do not have a proper framework, policies and procedures to properly protect cyberspace. Experience has also shown that a pure adoption by developing countries of the cyber frameworks of developed nations will not always be effective, especially due to the unique requirements and realities within developing worlds, such as limited resources, infrastructure, technologies, skills and experience. It is also necessary when talking about a strategic framework to secure cyberspace, to discuss cyber warfare, its general application and its possible utilisation as part of the strategy to protect national critical information infrastructure. This, as part of a developing country's national security strategy in addition to traditional cybersecurity defence measures. The approach taken for the research program, and discussed in this paper, is based on a comprehensive literature study on several existing cybersecurity policies and strategies from both developed and developing countries. From this the drivers / elements for national cybersecurity policies and strategies were identified. These drivers were than adapted to specifically relate to the requirements of developing countries, and then, utilising the identified and adapted drivers, our strategic framework for developing countries to secure their cyberspace was developed. This document will be very useful for those African countries venturing into defining relevant policies and procedures.

Modeling hospitals' adaptive capacity during a loss of infrastructure services.

Resilience in hospitals - their ability to withstand, adapt to, and rapidly recover from disruptive events - is vital to their role as part of national critical infrastructure. This paper presents a model to provide planning guidance to decision makers about how to make hospitals more resilient against possible disruption scenarios. This model represents a hospital's adaptive capacities that are leveraged to care for patients during loss of infrastructure services (power, water, etc.). The model is an optimization that reallocates and substitutes resources to keep patients in a high care state or allocates resources to allow evacuation if necessary. An illustrative example demonstrates how the model might be used in practice.

Protecting Our Critical Infrastructure: A Role for Community Volunteers

Protecting our nation's critical infrastructure, including our reservoirs, dams, and other water conveyances, is essential to ensuring the safety of water ‐ our lifeblood. Most local governments are charged with this task, but funding constraints make constant facility monitoring difficult at best, especially when critical infrastructure is involved. Within the Austin Water Utility (AWU) in Texas, these constraints are all too real for its staff, who maintain 3,672 miles of water transmission lines. AWU's residential and commercial infrastructure consists of 39 reservoirs and 45 pump stations maintained by a staff of 28 within the 538‐sq mi area served by AWU. At capacity the utility produces 335 mgd of water for the City of Austin and metro‐area customers. AWU has come up with a unique, low‐cost way to meet infrastructure monitoring needs by tapping into a reliable source of trained volunteers.

사회기술적 시스템의 시스템보안과 시스템엔지니어링

As one member of the Korea Society of Systems Engineering (KOSSE) and especially as a member of Sociotechnical Systems session of the KOSSE, I tried to contribute somehow to the activity of KOSSE to help development of better Korea systems. This report is a brief discussion of the need for KOSSE activity in the Cyber Security area especially for the protection of national critical infrastructure systems from cyber terror.

The ‘state of exception’ and disaster education: a multilevel conceptual framework with implications for social justice

The term ‘state of exception’ has been used by Italian political theorist Giorgio Agamben to explain the ways in which emergencies, crises and disasters are used by governments to suspend legal processes. In this paper, we innovatively apply Agamben's theory to the way in which countries prepare and educate the population for various types of emergencies. We focus on two main aspects of Agamben's work: first, the paradoxical nature of the state of exception, as both a transient and a permanent part of governance. Second, it is a ‘liminal’ concept expressing the limits of law and where ‘law’ meets ‘not-law’. We consider the relationship between laws related to disasters and emergencies, and case studies of the ways in which three countries (England, Germany and Japan) educate their populations for crisis and disaster. In England, we consider how emergency powers have been orientated around the protection of the Critical National Infrastructure and how this has produced localised ‘states of exception’ and, relatedly, pedagogical anomalies. In Germany, we consider the way in which laws related to disaster and civil protection, and the nature of volunteering for civil protection, produce exceptional spaces for non-German bodies. In Japan, we consider the debate around the absence of emergency powers and relate this to Japanese non-exceptional disaster education for natural disasters. Applying Agamben's work, we conclude by developing a new, multilevel empirical framework for analysing disaster education with implications for social justice.

Novel Approach for Detecting Network Anomalies for Substation Automation based on IEC 61850

An SA (Substation Automation) system based on IEC 61850 is an intelligent substation; it has been receiving considerable attention as a core component of a smart grid. The explosive increase of threats to cyber security has been expanded to critical national infrastructures including the power grid. Substation Automation has also become a main target of cyber-attacks. Currently, various countermeasures such as firewalls, IDS (Intrusion Detection System)s, and anti-virus solutions have been developed, but to date, these have not sufficiently reflected the inherent features of Substation Automation based on IEC 61850. This study suggests a method of anomaly detection for MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification) and GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented Substation Events) packets, the main communication protocols of IEC 61850 Substation Automation. 3-Phase preprocessing, EM (Expect Maximization), and one-class SVM (Support Vector Machine) techniques are applied. The effectiveness of the suggested method is evaluated through experiments.

국내 대학 및 대학원 정보보호 교육과정 분석 및 산업체 필요 지식과의 관련성 비교

ABSTRACT These days cyber attacks are increasing all over the world, and the national critical infrastructure and information network protection has become important. For this reason, the concentrated investment in information security and development of professional human resource are essential, but there is a short age of information security workforce in Korea. Currently, departments of information security in domestic universities ma ke efforts to develop human resource of information security and have a increasing interest in the curriculum design. So thi s paper investigates the curriculums of information security in domestic universities and graduate schools. And then, it compar es with the needs of industry knowledge and skills by using SPSS. Through this analysis, we will get implications about cur riculum design of Information security.Keywords: curriculum, information security, university, graduate school , industry needs접수일(2013년 10월 14일), 게재확정일(2013년 12월 5일)* 본 연구는 미래과학창조부 및 한국인터넷진흥원의 “고용계약형 지식정보보안 석사과정 지원사업”의 연구결과로 수행되었습니다. (과제번호 H2101-13-1001)†주저자, korea.minjeong@gmail.com‡교신저자, jhyoo@smu.ac.kr (Corresponding author)

Climate and security: evidence, emerging risks, and a new agenda

There are diverse linkages between climate change and security including risks of conflict, national security concerns, critical national infrastructure, geo-political rivalries and threats to human security. We review analysis of these domains from primary research and from policy prescriptive and advocacy sources. We conclude that much analysis over-emphasises deterministic mechanisms between climate change and security. Yet the climate-security nexus is more complex than it appears and requires attention from across the social sciences. We review the robustness of present social sciences analysis in assessing the causes and consequences of climate change on human security, and identify new areas of research. These new areas include the need to analyse the absence of conflict in the face of climate risks and the need to expand the range of issues accounted for in analysis of climate and security including the impacts of mitigation response on domains of security. We argue for the necessity of robust theories that explain causality and associations, and the need to include theories of asymmetric power relations in explaining security dimensions. We also highlight the dilemmas of how observations and historical analysis of climate and security dimensions may be limited as the climate changes in ways that present regions with unprecedented climate risks.

Securing water and wastewater systems: global perspectives

AbstractThere has been long‐standing concern that water systems are vulnerable to man‐made and natural threats. In the United States, after the events of 11 September 2001, government planners focused on the possibility that the nation's critical infrastructure may be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. However, as demonstrated in this paper, there are many other factors that influence water supply security including lack of water resource availability, threats from point and nonpoint source pollution to water‐related ecosystems, and impact of climate change. In order to meet water security threats, there is a need to balance human and environmental water needs while at the same time safeguarding essential ecosystem services and biodiversity. Integrated water resources management may help achieve this balance. Examples are presented, which illustrate the diversity of water security throughout the world.

Japan, the Ministry of Defense and Cyber-Security

Following a series of shocks that rocked Japan's confidence in its cyber-security provisions, in April 2014 the Japanese Ministry of Defense will finally set up a unified command to deal with cyber-security threats. However, many issues, including the role of Japan's military in the protection of critical national infrastructure and the nation's cyber-warfare doctrine, have yet to be finalised. Paul Kallender examines recent policy and posture changes by the Ministry of Defense as it tries to get to grips with new and changing cyber-security challenges.

A Smart Self-Healing Grid: In Pursuit of a More Reliable and Resilient System [In My View

As the world grows more interconnected, we are becoming surrounded by complex interactive networks/systems (CIN/S). These systems consist of numerous components interlinked in complicated webs. As a result of the number of components and their intricate interconnections, CIN/S are extremely difficult to design, analyze, control, and protect. Despite these challenges, understanding and managing CIN/S is becoming critical. Many of our nation's critical infrastructures are complex interdependent/networked dynamical system of systems. The secure, reliable operation of complex, increasingly interdependent, infrastructure systems such as these is fundamental to our economy, security, and quality of life. Of particular importance is the uninterrupted availability of inexpensive, high-quality electrical power and reliable, high-performance communication networks. The potential for preventing rare events but high-impact cascading phenomena represent just a few of many new science and technology concepts that are under development. Analysis and modeling of interdependent infrastructures is especially pertinent.

Cyber resilience: A review of critical national infrastructure and cyber security protection measures applied in the UK and USA

This paper presents cyber resilience as key strand of national security. It establishes the importance of critical national infrastructure protection and the growing vicarious nature of remote, well-planned, and well executed cyber attacks on critical infrastructures. Examples of well-known historical cyber attacks are presented, and the emergence of ‘internet of things’ as a cyber vulnerability issue yet to be tackled is explored. The paper identifies key steps being undertaken by those responsible for detecting, deterring, and disrupting cyber attacks on critical national infrastructure in the United Kingdom and the USA.

Computational Game Theory for Security and Sustainability

Security is a critical concern around the world that arises in protecting our ports, airports, transportation and other critical national infrastructure from adversaries, in protecting our wildlife and forests from poachers and smugglers, and in curtailing the illegal flow of weapons, drugs and money; and it arises in problems ranging from physical to cyber-physical systems. In all of these problems, we have limited security resources which prevent full security coverage at all times; instead, security resources must be deployed intelligently taking into account differences in priorities of targets requiring security coverage, the responses of the attackers to the security posture, and potential uncertainty over the types, capabilities, knowledge and priorities of attackers faced. Game theory, which studies interactions among multiple selfinterested agents, is well-suited to the adversarial reasoning required for security resource allocation and scheduling problems. Casting the problem as a Bayesian Stackelberg game, we have developed new algorithms for efficiently solving such games that provide randomized patrolling or inspection strategies. These algorithms have led to some initial successes in this challenging problem arena, leading to advances over previous approaches in security scheduling and allocation, e.g., by addressing key weaknesses of predictability of human schedulers. These algorithms are now deployed in multiple applications: ARMOR has been deployed at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) since 2007 to randomize checkpoints on the roadways entering the airport and canine patrol routes within the airport terminals [17]; IRIS, a game-theoretic scheduler for randomized deployment of the US Federal Air Marshals (FAMS) requiring significant scaleup in underlying algorithms, has been in use since 2009 [17]; PROTECT, which schedules the US Coast Guard’s randomized patrolling of ports using a new set of algorithms based on modeling bounded-rational human attackers, has been deployed in the

Analysis of the Curriculum of Departments of Information Security in Universities and Comparison with Industrial Needs in Korea

These days cyber attacks are increasing all over the world, and the national critical infrastructure and information network protection have become important. For this reason, the concentrated investment in information security and bringing-up professional human resource are essential, but there is a shortage of information security workforce in Korea. Currently, departments of information security in Universities make efforts to bring up human resource of information security. On the other hand they have an increasing interest in the curriculum design of information security. So this paper investigates the curriculum of information security in Universities of Korea, and then compare with industrial needs of information security. Through this analysis, we will get implications about curriculum design of information security. 

Confirmation of Theoretical Results Regarding Control Theoretic Cyber Attacks on Controllers

National critical infrastructures like power plants, grids, water distribution system etc employ a hierarchy of controllers exchanging data over a network. They employ sophisticated control algorithm implemented in software. Various researches have examined the attack scenarios in such embedded control systems from control theoretic perspectives. In this paper we revisit these theoretical attacks and postulate that such attacks could be detected by statistical techniques and hence may be used to design security monitors. The postulate is confirmed by simulation results.

The Future of Cyber-Resilience in an Age of Global Complexity

This article seeks to discuss two key challenges in the area of cyber-resilience. First, it asks: who owns UK cyber-resilience? Some 80 per cent of the UK's critical national infrastructure is in private hands and the last decade has seen efforts to legislate away some of the problem of resilience by creating legal duties for service providers. This has contributed to a new ecology for intelligence, security and resilience consisting of complex state–private citizen partnerships. However, it is unlikely that populations will accept this approach to risk-shifting when systems fail. Second, it considers what constitutes genuinely robust cyber-defence after the Stuxnet event of 2010. Arguably, any system that depends on information technology, however well protected, is now vulnerable. There is a dawning realisation that the best technical solutions offer only partial assurance. Paradoxically, in an era when the Internet seems ubiquitous, a mixture of analogue and manual systems – often called systems diversity – offers a solution. However, mixed or diverse systems are a declining legacy and not the result of design. We close by discussing the immense challenges that the growing prevalence of electronic systems will bring.

Securing the Grid: Information Sharing in the Fifth Dimension

The cyberspace dimension adds to the four dimensions traditionally associated with United States defense. Threats to cyberspace connote real threats to U.S. security interests. The nation's electric grid is one of the nation's critical infrastructures that is subject to cyber threats. The authors explore what institutional efforts have been taken to address these threats and conclude that a practice of information sharing would help normalize cyberwar toward a more traditional deterrence. In the twenty-first century, bits and bytes are as threatening as bullets and bombs… - William J. Lynn 1

Cyber security threats in the power sector: Need for a domain specific regulatory framework in India

India is poised to spend over USD 5.8billion as part of the National Smart Grid Mission aimed to alleviate India's ailing power sector as part of its 12th Five year plan (2012–2017). The federal government sponsored Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Program (R-APDRP) is also focused on building ICT capability in the state electricity boards. Presently however, there is no power sector specific cyber security mandates or policies in India. The Stuxnet, Shamoon and Anonymous incidents have shown that cyber attacks can cause significant damage and pose a risk to National Critical Infrastructure. A lack of security planning as part of designing the Smart grids can potentially leave gaping holes in the country's power sector stability. The paper highlights key cyber security threats across the entire power sector value chain—from generation, to transmission and distribution. It is aimed at building the case for power sector specific cyber security regulations based on the experience of regulators in other critical infrastructure sectors like Banking and Telecom in India and power sector regulations internationally.

Hacking the Internet

Why should hackers try to disable computers when they might be able to set their sights higher? Routers can be just as vulnerable as servers, so why not bring down the entire Internet? The US department for Homeland Security (DHS) was set up in November 2002 with the primary responsibility of protecting the USA (and its territories) from terrorist attacks, accidents, and natural disasters. However, its remit has slowly spread in recent years to cover the nation's Critical National Infrastructure, which includes the structure of the Internet itself.

Cyber-Threats to Critical National Infrastructure: An Intelligence Challenge

Cyber attacks directed at Critical National Infrastructure constitute a significant, diverse, and rapidly escalating risk-element in the global threat environment. Critical infrastructures are susc...