A Holistic Approach for Cyber Assurance of Critical Infrastructure with the Viable System Model

Abstract

Part 10: Organizational SecurityInternational audienceIndustrial Control Systems (ICSs) are of the most important components of National Critical Infrastructure. They can provide control capabilities in complex systems of critical importance such as energy production and distribution, transportation, telecoms etc. Protection of such systems is the cornerstone of essential service provision with resilience and in timely manner. Effective risk management methods form the basis for the protection of an Industrial Control System. However, the nature of ICSs render traditional risk management methods insufficient. The proprietary character and the complex interrelationships of the various systems that form an ICS, the potential impacts outside its boundaries, along with emerging trends such as the exposure to the Internet, necessitate revisiting traditional risk management methods, in a way that treat an ICS as a system-of-systems rather than a single, one-off entity. Towards this direction, in this paper we present enhancements to the traditional risk management methods at the phase of risk assessment, by utilising the cybernetic construct of the Viable System Model (VSM) as a means towards a holistic view of the risks against Critical Infrastructure. For the purposes of our research, utilising VSM’s recursive nature, we model the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, a most commonly used ICS, as a VSM and identify the various assets, interactions with the internal and external environment, threats and vulnerabilities

A Holistic Approach for Enhancing Critical Infrastructure Protection: Research Agenda

“…Several works in the literature have proposed a holistic approach for enhancing CIP [11,12,27]. The authors in [27] evaluate the risk assessment phase of critical infrastructure and propose an enhancement to the traditional risk management methods.…”

“…Several works in the literature have proposed a holistic approach for enhancing CIP [11,12,27]. The authors in [27] evaluate the risk assessment phase of critical infrastructure and propose an enhancement to the traditional risk management methods. They employ the cybernetic construct of the viable system model towards a holistic view of the risks against critical infrastructure.…”

Analysing information security behaviour

“…According to Spyridopoulos et al (2014), when principles from the Viable System Model, which is grounded in Systems Theory are combined with an IT Risk Analysis, more security threats and vulnerabilities can be identified. Furthermore, this shows that theoretical research findings can provide security managers with insights which they might otherwise not consider.…”