Synergistic Security for the Industrial Internet of Things: Integrating Redundancy, Diversity, and Hardening

TL;DR

This paper proposes a multi-pronged security framework for the Industrial Internet of Things, combining redundancy, diversity, and hardening to enhance resilience against cyber-attacks in critical infrastructure systems.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for quantifying cyber-security risks and optimizing security investments in redundancy, diversity, and hardening for IIoT systems.

Findings

Integrated approach reduces security risk at constant cost

Framework applicable to water distribution and transportation systems

Numerical evaluation confirms effectiveness of combined security techniques

Abstract

As the Industrial Internet of Things (IIot) becomes more prevalent in critical application domains, ensuring security and resilience in the face of cyber-attacks is becoming an issue of paramount importance. Cyber-attacks against critical infrastructures, for example, against smart water-distribution and transportation systems, pose serious threats to public health and safety. Owing to the severity of these threats, a variety of security techniques are available. However, no single technique can address the whole spectrum of cyber-attacks that may be launched by a determined and resourceful attacker. In light of this, we consider a multi-pronged approach for designing secure and resilient IIoT systems, which integrates redundancy, diversity, and hardening techniques. We introduce a framework for quantifying cyber-security risks and optimizing IIoT design by determining security investments in redundancy, diversity, and hardening. To demonstrate the applicability of our framework, we present two case studies in water distribution and transportation a case study in water-distribution systems. Our numerical evaluation shows that integrating redundancy, diversity, and hardening can lead to reduced security risk at the same cost.