Supervisory control strategies for enhancing system security and privacy

Abstract

Enhancing the security and reliability of automated systems that control vital national infrastructures, such as energy and water distribution systems, has recently emerged as a critical aspect of maintaining, protecting, and securing such infrastructures against interference or possibly malicious activity. Examples of such automated systems include Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, Distributed Control Systems (DCS), and networks of embedded sensors and actuators, most of which were designed without anticipating the security threats that arise due to increasing reliance on common software, public telecommunication networks, and the Internet. In this paper, we discuss how state-based notions of opacity in finite automata models can be used to capture security properties of interest in automated systems that can be modeled as controlled finite automata subject to external disturbances.We also describe when and how control objectives can be achieved while enforcing desirable security and/or privacy objectives. ©2010 IEEE.