On building secure SCADA systems using security patterns

Abstract

Critical infrastructure systems are important systems that support our daily lives. Protecting these systems is attracting attention from the research community. The key component of a critical infrastructure system is the process control system, also known as the supervisory, control, and data acquisition (SCADA) system. On the other hand, security patterns are a well established concept that are used to analyze, construct and evaluate secure systems. This paper aims to propose methods to build a secure SCADA system using security patterns. In this paper, we study the archi-tecture of a general SCADA system and analyze the potential attacks against it. Also, we use security patterns as a tool to design a secure SCADA system that is resistant to these attacks. We believe our research work lays a new direction for future research on secure SCADA systems. Copyright © 2009 ACM.