Uniform approach of risk communication in distributed IT environments combining safety and security aspects

Abstract

The trend to compose real time systems with standard IT known from conventional office domains results in heterogeneous technical environments. Examples are modern industrial process automation networks. It is a challenging task, because of potential impacts of security incidents to the system safety. For example, robot control units could be manipulated by malicious codes. The term "risk communication" is introduced, to describe alarm communication in human-machine interaction scenarios. User adapted risk communication between humans and industrial automation systems, including home robotics, can prevent hazards and/or threats to the entire system safety and security. Current safety and security risk communication standards are compared to examine the adequacy for our uniform approach. This paper focuses on alarm system standards in the industrial process automation domain and intrusion detection systems from the conventional desktop IT domain. A uniform model based approach for risk communication in distributed IT environments is introduced. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.