Secure Links: Secure-by-Design Communications in IEC 61499 Industrial Control Applications

Increasing automation and external connectivity in industrial control systems (ICS) demand a greater emphasis on software-level communication security. In this article, we propose secure-by-design development method for building ICS applications, where requirements from security standards like ISA/IEC 62443 are fulfilled by design-time abstractions called secure links. Proposed as an extension to the IEC 61499 standard, links incorporate both light-weight traditional mechanisms into applications with negligible effort. Applications containing can be automatically compiled fully 61499-compliant software. Experimental results show significantly reduce design code complexity improve application maintainability traceability.