Continuous User Identity Verification for Trusted Operators in Control Rooms

Abstract

Abstract. Human operators in control rooms are often responsible of issuing critical commands, and in charge of managing sensitive data. Insiders must be prevented to operate on the system: they may benefit of their position in the control room to fool colleagues, and gain access to machines or accounts. This paper proposes an authentication system for deterring and detecting malicious access to the workstations of control rooms. Specifically tailored for the operators in the control room of the crisis management system Secure!, the solution aims to guarantee authentication and non-repudiation of operators, reducing the risk that unauthorized personnel (including intruders) misuses a workstation. A continuous multi-biometric authentication mechanism is developed and applied in which biometric data is acquired transparently from the operator and verified continuously through time. This paper presents the authentication system design and prototype, its execution and experimental results.

Contrasting False Identities in Social Networks by Trust Chains and Biometric Reinforcement

“…Several works exploit biometrics to implement continuous authentication schemes [20], [21], [22], [23]. Indeed, in highsecurity environments the typical session level authentication can be exposed to session hijacking in which an attacker targets a post-authenticated session.…”

Continuous Authentication and Non-repudiation for the Security of Critical Systems

“…The security of this workplace should be granted in order to prevent the intervention of insiders: they may benefit of their position in the control room to fool colleagues, and gain access to machines or accounts. In our previous work [3], we proposed an authentication system for deterring and detecting malicious access to the workstations of control rooms. Specifically tailored for people working in a crisis management system control room, the solution aims to guarantee authentication and, if possible, non-repudiation of operators, reducing the risk that unauthorized personnel (including intruders) misuse a workstation.…”

“…We developed a continuous multi-biometric authentication mechanism in which biometric data is transparently acquired from the operator and continuously verified. More details about the protocol, the architecture, the algorithm for trust level computation, the prototype realized, and the software implemented can be found in [3].…”