The next generation electric power grids as well as many other modern industrial systems such as electric vehicles, ships and factories rely on advanced control and communication technologies. This increasingly tight integration of cyber and physical domains removes the boundary between the physical system and the outside world, thereby making the operation of such systems vulnerable to hostile cyber-attacks.
Thorough cyber-physical security assessment of such systems requires multidisciplinary approach in order to capture the vulnerabilities within different layers of an industrial system architecture. These layers typically include hardware, firmware, software, network and process layers.
Our industrial partners have the expertise in designing the reliable cyber-security mechanisms in the first four layers (hardware, firmware, software, network), while our research focuses on developing novel cyber-security mechanisms in the process layer of various modern industrial systems.
Particularly, our research relies on the application of modern control theory and artificial intelligence concepts to create a holistic cyber-physical-security framework that includes comprehensive process layer vulnerability assessment tools, attack detection/mitigation schemes and validation through formal methods and experimental/hardware in the loop tests.
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