Recent world events and geopolitics have brought the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to cyberattacks to the forefront. While there has been considerable attention to attacks on Information Technology (IT) systems, the vulnerabilities and dangers posed by industrial control systems (ICS) have received significantly less attention. In this paper, we present a holistic, integrated safety and security analysis, we call Cybersafety, for one such industrial system – an industrial chiller plant – as an example. In this analysis, we identify vulnerabilities emerging from interactions between technology, operator actions as well as organizational structure, and provide recommendations to mitigate resulting loss scenarios in a systematic manner.

Early Research Paper

Protecting Chiller Systems from Cyberattack using a Systems Thinking Approach

Shaharyar Khan

Stuart Madnick

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Description	Recent world events and geopolitics have brought the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to cyberattacks to the forefront. While there has been considerable attention to attacks on Information Technology (IT) systems, the vulnerabilities and dangers posed by industrial control systems (ICS) have received significantly less attention. In this paper, we present a holistic, integrated safety and security analysis, we call Cybersafety, for one such industrial system – an industrial chiller plant – as an example. In this analysis, we identify vulnerabilities emerging from interactions between technology, operator actions as well as organizational structure, and provide recommendations to mitigate resulting loss scenarios in a systematic manner.
Authors	Shaharyar Khan, Stuart Madnick
Date Published	Nov 2, 2022
PDF Version	protecting-chiller-systems.pdf (1.5 MiB)

Protecting Chiller Systems from Cyberattack using a Systems Thinking Approach

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