Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) are increasingly being adopted in a wide range of applicative domains, including the smart grid, building automation, and air traffic control, to name a few. While the widespread adoption of CPSs brings enormous benefits in terms of efficiency and competitiveness, it also introduces new challenges that the research community has to consider. The December 2010 report of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, “Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology” calls for continued investment in CPS research because of its scientific and technological importance as well as its potential impact on grand challenges in a number of sectors critical to U.S. security and competitiveness, including energy, aerospace, automotive, civil infrastructure, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation.

The goal of the workshop is to address this critical need by providing researchers and practitioners with an interdisciplinary forum to present, discuss, and exchange ideas that address the challenges of next-generation Cyber Physical Systems. The expected output of the workshop is to establish the agenda of future research efforts in the field data integration, with specific emphasis on disruptive technologies and holistic approaches for addressing the grand challenges introduced by CPSs. The workshop also aims at creating solid and long-lasting synergies between researchers and industrial partners from all the disciplines that are relevant to CPSs.

Keynote Speaker

Zbigniew Kalbarczyk  

Zbigniew Kalbarczyk
Research Professor
Coordinated Science Laboratory
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois, USA

Title

Computing through Failures and Cyber Attacks: Case for Resilient Smart Power Grid

Abstract

Rapid proliferation of cyber physical systems (CPS) in our society makes them an attractive target for miscreants, in particular when CPS monitors and controls physical processes within a critical infrastructure such as power grid or water distribution. By integrating computation and physical processes in a tight control loop, CPS enables rapid response to changes in the controlled environment. However, regardless of how well a system is engineered, it is a matter of time for it to fail and hence, computing through failures and cyber-attacks becomes a norm rather than an exception. This talk first discusses challenges in achieving resilient smart cyber physical systems using examples from: (i) empirical studies on impact of failures/attacks on SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems used in power grid and (ii) data on real attacks on a commercial CPS. Then, we use an example of the SCADA deployed in the power grid, where a sophisticated attacker exploits system vulnerabilities and issues malicious control commands to drive remote facilities into an unsecure state without exhibiting any protocol-level anomalies. In order to detect such attacks, methods that combine system knowledge on both cyber and physical infrastructure in the power grid are needed to estimate execution consequences of control commands and thus, to reveal attacker’s malicious intentions. We present an example method to address the challenge.