Security vs. safety: Why do people die despite good safety?

Abstract

This paper will show in detail the differences between safety and security. An argument is made for new system design requirements based on a threat sustainable system (TSS) drawing on threat scanning, flexibility, command and control, system of systems, human factors and population dependencies. Principles of sustainability used in historical design processes are considered alongside the complex changes of technology and emerging threat actors. The paper recognises that technologies and development methods for safety do not work for security. Safety has the notion of a one or two event protection, but cyber-attacks are multi-event situations. The paper recognizes that the behaviour of interconnected systems and modern systems requirements for national sustainability. System security principles for sustainability of critical systems are considered in relation to failure, security architecture, quality of service, authentication and trust and communication of failure to operators. Design principles for operators are discussed along with recognition of human factors failures. These principles are then applied as the basis for recommended changes in systems design and discuss system control dominating the hierarchy of design decisions but with harmonization of safety requirements up to the level of sustaining security. These new approaches are discussed as the basis for future research on adaptive flexible systems that can sustain attacks and the uncertainty of fast-changing technology.

Security Issues and Software Updates Management in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Era

“…While safety incidents and accidents are involuntary, security ones are usually originated by on-purpose malevolent attacks. These events are unexpected and not easy to predict beforehand [ 5 ]. The combination of safety and non-safety-critical applications, such as security, is defined as a mixed-criticality system.…”