A Nonlinear Systems Framework for Cyberattack Prevention for Chemical Process Control Systems †

Abstract

Recent cyberattacks against industrial control systems highlight the criticality of preventing future attacks from disrupting plants economically or, more critically, from impacting plant safety. This work develops a nonlinear systems framework for understanding cyberattack-resilience of process and control designs and indicates through an analysis of three control designs how control laws can be inspected for this property. A chemical process example illustrates that control approaches intended for cyberattack prevention which seem intuitive are not cyberattack-resilient unless they meet the requirements of a nonlinear systems description of this property.