CAPRICA

CAPRICA INFO

Description

CAPRICA proposes to shape a new generation of secure and resilient approaches for trustworthy Industrial Control Systems, by combining techniques and principles emerging in ICS network security, anomaly detection and control system operation. Industrial control and cyber system components must act together cooperatively to improve the effectiveness of detecting malicious attacks and unintentional events, and intervene to apply appropriate countermeasures to maintain the effective operation of the system. This research will develop and implement a converged approach where the control system operates in an environment supporting cyber assurance, in the form of network defence, situational monitoring and novel control strategies, to ensure the ICS can support resilient operation and rapid recovery in the face of an attack.

Objective

CAPRICA will demonstrate a converged approach to ICS network security and industrial control through parallel activities; investigation of mitigation techniques in real-time industrial control and an in-depth threat analysis of present streaming SCADA protocols. A demonstrator will be constructed to showcase the new approach using the QUB “synchronous islanding” testbench, which utilises online synchrophasor data from one of the UK’s most expansive phasor measurement unit (PMU) networks.

Approach

In order to achieve cyber assurance in ICS, it is necessary to consider secure functionality across all the systems that comprise an infrastructure. This will typically incorporate a diversity of interconnected and interdependent components supporting IT, SCADA, control and physical operations. To support the cyber assurance of the infrastructure as a whole, it is necessary to provide a converged and cohesive approach that can detect unwanted actions across the whole infrastructure. It is also essential that reactive control measures are put in place that can intervene to ensure the ongoing core physical functions of the infrastructure remain within acceptable operational parameters, even while cyberrelated elements of the infrastructure are experiencing disruption. CAPRICA will address these challenges, with various real-world use-cases and operational scenarios considering internal and external threats to ICS infrastructure. Captured data and extracted metrics are expected to be of significance to articulate cyber risk and demonstrate business impact.

CAPRICA Publications

IEEE C37.118-2 Synchrophasor Communication Framework: Overview, Cyber Vulnerabilities Analysis and Performance Evaluation
A Microgrid Testbed for Interdisciplinary Research on Cyber-Secure Industrial Control in Power Systems
Analysis of IEEE C37.118 and IEC 61850-90-5 Synchrophasor Communication Frameworks
STPA-SafeSec: Safety and security analysis for cyber-physical systems
Towards a Resilience Metric Framework for Cyber-Physical Systems
GPS Disciplined Analogue to Digital Converter for Phasor Measurement Applications
Threat Analysis of BlackEnergy Malware for Synchrophasor based Real-time Control and Monitoring in Smart Grid
Model Based Intrusion Detection System For Synchrophasor Applications In Smart Grid
Modernizing Wide-Area Grid Communications for Distributed Energy Resource Applications using MQTT Publish-Subscribe Protocol
IEC 61850 Substation Configuration Language as a basis for Automated Security and SDN Configuration

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS

Prof Sakir Sezer

Prof Sakir Sezer is PI of the CAPRICA project. Research undertaken under his supervision targets various aspects of information and network security technologies. The main focus has been the acceleration of network processing and cyber security related functions by exploring novel hardware based parallel processing architectures, System on Chip (SoC) and programmable technologies, including MPSoC and FPGA. The projects have been funded by a number of research funding bodies including EPSRC, ESRC, FP7, Innovate, InvestNI, and Industry.

Dr David Laverty

Dr David Laverty is a lecturer with the Energy, Power and Intelligent Control (EPIC) Cluster at Queen’s University Belfast, with research interests in Smart Grids, Cyber Security, and electrification and decentralisation. Dr Laverty founded the OpenPMU project, which is working towards a fully open source Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU). He leads projects on anti-islanding detection, synchronous islanding, secure SCADA systems, electric vehicles and demand side management.

Dr Kieran McLaughlin

Dr Kieran McLaughlin is a Lecturer at QUB’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT). He leads CSIT’s research in cyber security for cyber-physical systems. This includes smart grids, industrial control systems (ICS), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, and related critical infrastructure networks. His research interests include threat analysis, intrusion detection and prevention, behavioural and stateful analysis of network protocols, and cyber-physical resilience measures.

PARTNERED WITH

UNIVERSITY INFORMATION

Queen’s University Belfast was founded by Royal Charter in 1845, as Queen’s College, and can trace its roots as far back as 1810. It is the UK’s ninth oldest university. Times Higher Education ranked Queen’s in the top 25 of the world’s most international universities 2016, and it is among the top one per cent of global universities according to QS World Rankings. In food security, education, pharmacy, health, modern languages, astrophysics, engineering, cyber security, English and history, Queen’s research impacts right across society. Results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework placed Queen’s University eighth in the UK for research intensity. Queen’s University’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) was honoured in 2015 by Her Majesty the Queen, with the award of a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher And Further Education, for its work in strengthening global cyber security.

Email address: info@ecit.qub.ac.uk

Telephone number: +44 (0) 28 9097 1700

Website address: www.csit.qub.ac.uk

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