Trust-but-Verify in Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems can incorporate modern technological mechanisms to harden the security of their information technology (IT) elements. However, the operational technology (OT) elements at the edge are not directly addressed by IT solutions. In this talk, we visit the core problem of adding verification of trust to existing cyber-physical systems via vetting-based verification of standards and via dynamic, passive, runtime monitoring of sensor streams to identify, characterize and monitor elements beyond the conventional IT surfaces. We illustrate how recent advances including digital twins, natural language processing and machine learning are directly useful in advancing this trust-but-verify approach to security and resilience of cyber-physical systems.

Trust-but-Verify in Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-physical systems span a wide spectrum, from long-lived legacy systems to more modern installations. Trust is an issue that arises across the spectrum, albeit with different variants of goals and constraints. On the one end of the spectrum, legacy systems are characterized by function-based designs in which trust is an implicitly in-built concept…

Kalyan Perumalla

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Kalyan Perumalla

As a Federal Program Manager in Advanced Scientific Computing Research at the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science, Kalyan Perumalla manages a $100-million R&D portfolio covering AI, HPC, Quantum, SciDAC, and Basic Computer Science. In his 25-year R&D leadership experience, he previously led advanced R&D as Distinguished Research Staff Member at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) developing scalable software and applications on the world’s largest supercomputers for 17 years, including as a line manager and a founding group leader. He has held senior faculty and adjunct appointments at UTK, GT, and UNL, and was an IAS Fellow at Durham University.