Establishing Cyber Resilience in Embedded Systems for Securing Next-Generation Critical Infrastructure

Abstract

The mass integration and deployment of intelligent technologies within critical commercial, industrial and public environments have a significant impact on business operations and society as a whole. Though integration of these critical intelligent technologies pose serious embedded security challenges for technology manufacturers which are required to be systematically approached, in-line with international security regulations. This paper establish security foundation for such intelligent technologies by deriving embedded security requirements to realise the core security functions laid out by international security authorities, and proposing microarchitectural characteristics to establish cyber resilience in embedded systems. To bridge the research gap between embedded and operational security domains, a detailed review of existing embedded security methods, microarchitectures and design practises is presented. The existing embedded security methods have been found ad-hoc, passive and strongly rely on building and maintaining trust. To the best of our knowledge to date, no existing embedded security microarchitecture or defence mechanism provides continuity of data stream or security once trust has broken. This functionality is critical for embedded technologies deployed in critical infrastructure to enhance and maintain security, and to gain evidence of the security breach to effectively evaluate, improve and deploy active response and mitigation strategies. To this end, the paper proposes three microarchitectural characteristics that shall be designed and integrated into embedded architectures to establish, maintain and improve cyber resilience in embedded systems for next-generation critical infrastructure.

Evolution of Embedded Platform Security Technologies: Past, Present & Future Challenges

“…To approach these diverse security challenges, there is a need for secure-by-design active-defence platform architecture rather than an afterthought [1], [2], [3], [4]. This needs active defences [3], [8], [9], [10] embedded within the platform's hardware and software stack complimenting each other.…”

“…It is evident that the vast majority of software security methods are not able to circumvent the explosion of security vulnerabilities and attacks launched by malicious actors. Because, they are often ad-hoc and passive, designed to mitigate a certain class of known attacks [2], [3], [4]. As they are not targeted to fix the root-causes of the underlying platform security architecture, rather focused circumvent the vulnerability itself or poor use of secure-design practices.…”

“…The reliance on intelligent computing technologies has grown opportunities for adversaries to conduct malicious activities, steal valuable data, launch attacks and compromise public and private digital services [1], [2], [3], [4]. The international government agencies have released cybersecurity regulations [5] to manage such challenges by advocating businesses and technology manufacturers to comply and adhere to these regulations.…”

“…These defence mechanisms can facilitate designing detect, respond and recover functions in case of malicious activity, software malfunction or adversarial attack [3], [4], [8], [9]. Since such incidents cause severe damage to the business reputation and safety of their users, the need for strong and robust platform security has become an obligatory design and operational security requirement for nextgeneration intelligent embedded technologies [3], [2], [10].…”

“…These technological advancements have guided the evolution of both new computing paradigms, threats, attacks vectors and security architectures to meet the diverse security requirements [12], [13]. In response, novel defence and security mechanisms have been incrementally introduced into security architectures, to strengthen security perimeter and reduce attack surface [2], [6], [9], [14], while maintaining data confidentiality, integrity and availability of digital services.…”