Integrated functional safety and cyber security analysis

STPA-SafeSec: Safety and security analysis for cyber-physical systems

Cyber-physical systems tightly integrate physical processes and information and communication technologies. As today’s critical infrastructures, e.g., the power grid or water distribution networks, are complex cyber-physical systems, ensuring their safety and security becomes of paramount importance.Traditional safety analysis methods, such as HAZOP, are ill-suited to assess these systems. Furt...

Aligning Cyber-Physical System Safety and Security

Safety and security are two key properties of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Safety is aimed at protecting the systems from accidental failures in order to avoid hazards, while security is focused on protecting the systems from intentional attacks. They share identical goals – protecting CPS from failing. When aligned within a CPS, safety and security work well together in providing a solid foun...

Cyber security challenges in Smart Cities: Safety, security and privacy

The world is experiencing an evolution of Smart Cities. These emerge from innovations in information technology that, while they create new economic and social opportunities, pose challenges to our security and expectations of privacy. Humans are already interconnected via smart phones and gadgets. Smart energy meters, security devices and smart appliances are being used in many cities. Homes, ...

Focus: Safety & Security in Cyber-physical Systems

Cyber Safety: A Systems Theory Approach to Managing Cyber Security Risks – Applied to TJX Cyber Attack

To manage security risks more effectively in today’s complex and dynamic cyber environment, a new way of thinking is needed to complement traditional approaches. In this paper we propose a new approach for managing cyber security risks, based on a model for accident analysis used in the Systems Safety field, called System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP). We have adapted and appli...