A reference model for model-based design of critical infrastructure protection systems

Abstract

Today's war field environment is getting versatile as the activities of unconventional wars such as terrorist attacks and cyber-attacks have noticeably increased lately. The damage caused by such unconventional wars has also turned out to be serious particularly if targets are critical infrastructures that are constructed in support of banking and finance, transportation, power, information and communication, government, and so on. The critical infrastructures are usually interconnected to each other and thus are very vulnerable to attack. As such, to ensure the security of critical infrastructures is very important and thus the concept of critical infrastructure protection (CIP) has come. The program to realize the CIP at national level becomes the form of statute in each country. On the other hand, it is also needed to protect each individual critical infrastructure. The objective of this paper is to study on an effort to do so, which can be called the CIP system (CIPS). There could be a variety of ways to design CIPS's. Instead of considering the design of each individual CIPS, a reference model-based approach is taken in this paper. The reference model represents the design of all the CIPS's that have many design elements in common. In addition, the development of the reference model is also carried out using a variety of model diagrams. The modeling language used therein is the systems modeling language (SysML), which was developed and is managed by Object Management Group (OMG) and a de facto standard. Using SysML, the structure and operational concept of the reference model are designed to fulfil the goal of CIPS's, resulting in the block definition and activity diagrams. As a case study, the operational scenario of the nuclear power plant while being attacked by terrorists is studied using the reference model. The effectiveness of the results is also analyzed using multiple analysis models. It is thus expected that the approach taken here has some merits over the traditional design methodology of repeating requirements analysis and system design.

A model‐based systems engineering approach to critical infrastructure vulnerability assessment and decision analysis

“…While DoDAF is used to represent the system in this research, the final product is a complete model that can be used to evaluate the system for vulnerabilities and help decision makers determine the best use of security resources. This work adopts an approach that has some similarities to the work by Shin et al and Kerzhner et al . Shin et al developed a reference model for critical infrastructure protection using SysML.…”

“…This work adopts an approach that has some similarities to the work by Shin et al and Kerzhner et al . Shin et al developed a reference model for critical infrastructure protection using SysML. The concept of operations of a nuclear power plant protection system is analyzed to determine which model would meet constraints such as accuracy of detection, object recognition, and cost.…”

“…Models were then analyzed to see which models met the requirements for protecting the power plant in the event of an attack. In their approach to developing a reference model, Shin et al do not discuss incorporating subject matter expert opinion in their analysis of protection schemes and do not consider the mapping of the system being protected to the critical infrastructure regulations, policy or requirements. This use of subject matter expert opinion and mapping to regulations, policy or requirements is one of the contributions of this article.…”