Virtual Industrial Control Systems for Cybersecurity Engineering Education

University Of Alabama In Huntsville, Huntsville AL

Investigators

Abstract

The industrial control systems used throughout critical infrastructure are often designed, built, operated, and maintained by engineers from domains related to the physical process being controlled. For example, chemical engineers design refineries, civil engineers design structures, and mechanical engineers design industrial robotic industrial control system. Cybersecurity is a critical concern for these systems. Exploited systems can cause financial and physical harm to society. Engineers and cybersecurity analysts must work together to securely provision, operate and maintain, and protect and defend critical industrial control systems. Chemical, mechanical, and civil engineers design and operate industrial control systems while cybersecurity personnel are tasked with designing, maintaining, and operating cybersecurity controls for the industrial control system. There is a lack of knowledge overlap among these two groups which can lead to misunderstandings among the two groups and slow the adoption of security controls for these critical systems. The objective of this project is to develop educational tools and coursework to narrow the knowledge gap between these groups and result in larger populations of domain engineers with cybersecurity expertise, and likewise, larger populations of cybersecurity analysts with domain engineering expertise. This project will develop a set of building blocks and methodologies for designing virtual industrial control system test beds. These reusable building blocks will be used to develop 3 virtual industrial control system test beds from civil, mechanical, and chemical engineering respectively; an active mass damper system, an industrial robot, and a distillation tower. Cybersecurity lectures and laboratory exercises will be designed for integration into existing classes in civil, chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering. Also, a set of industrial control system cybersecurity lectures and laboratory exercises will be developed and added to an existing Intro to Cybersecurity Engineering course offered to computer engineering and computer science students. We expect this project to train approximately 125 students per year at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) from the civil, chemical, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering programs and we expect large national impact due to sharing of lecture materials, laboratory exercises, and the virtual control system test beds with faculty at other universities.