A Three-Stage Dynamic Assessment Framework for Industrial Control System Security Based on a Method of W-HMM

Abstract

Industrial control systems (ICS) are applied in many fields. Due to the development of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data analysis inducing more cyberattacks, ICS always suffers from the risks. If the risks occur during system operations, corporate capital is endangered. It is crucial to assess the security of ICS dynamically. This paper proposes a dynamic assessment framework for industrial control system security (DAF-ICSS) based on machine learning and takes an industrial robot system as an example. The framework conducts security assessment from qualitative and quantitative perspectives, combining three assessment phases: static identification, dynamic monitoring, and security assessment. During the evaluation, we propose a weighted Hidden Markov Model (W-HMM) to dynamically establish the system’s security model with the algorithm of Baum–Welch. To verify the effectiveness of DAF-ICSS, we have compared it with two assessment methods to assess industrial robot security. The comparison result shows that the proposed DAF-ICSS can provide a more accurate assessment. The assessment reflects the system’s security state in a timely and intuitive manner. In addition, it can be used to analyze the security impact caused by the unknown types of ICS attacks since it infers the security state based on the explicit state of the system.