Position Paper: Safety and Security Monitoring in ICS/SCADA Systems

Supervisory control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems play a core role in a nation’s critical infrastructure, overseeing the monitoring and control of systems in electricity, gas supply, logistics services, banks and hospitals. Monitoring safety and security properties in industrial control system (ICS) and SCADA environments faces unique challenges not found in typical enterprise networks. Novel monitoring solutions are desirable that take into account these differences. This paper presents a new approach for monitoring safety and security properties in industrial control systems. The approach is based on verifying a formal specification of ICS/SCADA components during runtime that is capable of detecting abnormal system behaviours. The solution is miniaturised and can be deployed at various points throughout the SCADA network, making masquerading and man-in-the-middle attacks more difficult to execute successfully.