A control system testbed to validate critical infrastructure protection concepts

Thomas Morris, Anurag Srivastava, Bradley Reaves, Wei Gao, Kalyan Pavurapu and Ram Reddi

International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, 2011, vol. 4, issue 2, 88-103

Abstract: This paper describes the Mississippi State University SCADA Security Laboratory and Power and Energy Research laboratory. This laboratory combines model control systems from multiple critical infrastructure industries to create a testbed with functional physical processes controlled by commercial hardware and software over common industrial control system routable and non-routable networks. Laboratory exercises, functional demonstrations, and lecture material from the testbed have been integrated into a newly developed industrial control system cybersecurity course, into multiple other engineering and computer science courses, and into a series of short courses targeted to industry. Integration into the classroom allows the testbed to provide a workforce development function, prepares graduate students for research activities, and raises the profile of this research area with students. The testbed enables a research process in which cybersecurity vulnerabilities are discovered, exploits are used to understand the implications of the vulnerability on controlled physical processes, identified problems are classified by criticality and similarities in type and effect, and finally cybersecurity mitigations are developed and validated against within the testbed. Overviews of research enabled by the testbed are provided, including descriptions of software and network vulnerability research, a description of forensic data logger capability developed using the testbed to retrofit existing serial port MODBUS and DNP3 devices, and a description of intrusion detection research which leverages unique characteristics of industrial control systems.

Keywords: Testbed; Industrial control system; SCADA; Smart grid; Cybersecurity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1874548211000266
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ijocip:v:4:y:2011:i:2:p:88-103

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2011.06.005

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection is currently edited by Leon Strous

More articles in International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().