Development of IIoT Monitoring and Control Security Scheme for Cyber Physical Systems

Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution encapsulates future industry development trends to achieve more intelligent manufacturing processes, including reliance on Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). The increase in online access and control given by the incorporation of CPSs introduces a new challenge securing the operations of the CPS in that they are not supported by standard security protocols. This paper describes a process used to effectively protect the operations of an IIoT system by implementing security protocols on the CPS within the IIoT. A series of predefined boundary conditions of the safety critical parameters for which a heating and cooling CPS can safely operate within were established. If the CPS is commended to operate outside of these boundaries, it will disconnect from all external communication network and default to some pre-defined safe-operation mode until the system has been evaluated locally by an administrator and released from the safe-mode. This method was tested and validated by establishing a sample IIoT and CPS testbed setup which monitor and control the temperature of a target environment. An attack was initiated to force the target environment outside of the determined safety-critical parameters. The system responded by disabling all network ports and defaulted to the safe-operation mode established previously.