Secure Links: Secure-by-Design Communications in IEC 61499 Industrial Control Applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a secure-by-design development method for industrial control systems that integrates security mechanisms into applications via secure links, enhancing security, reducing complexity, and improving maintainability.

Contribution

It extends the IEC 61499 standard with secure links, enabling automatic compilation into compliant software with integrated security features.

Findings

Secure links reduce design complexity

Secure links improve application maintainability

Secure links enhance security compliance

Abstract

Increasing automation and external connectivity in industrial control systems (ICS) demand a greater emphasis on software-level communication security. In this article, we propose a secure-by-design development method for building ICS applications, where requirements from security standards like ISA/IEC 62443 are fulfilled by design-time abstractions called secure links. Proposed as an extension to the IEC 61499 development standard, secure links incorporate both light-weight and traditional security mechanisms into applications with negligible effort. Applications containing secure links can be automatically compiled into fully IEC 61499-compliant software. Experimental results show secure links significantly reduce design and code complexity and improve application maintainability and requirements traceability.