Author: Duncan Swinscow-Hall

The Role of Distributed Ledgers in Securing Urban Infrastructure

A post by Dr Cathy Mulligan (Imperial College), Tony Kenyon (Guardtime) and Kacper Zylka (Imperial College).

Imperial College’s Blockchain research group (IC3RE) together with Guardtime have been investigating how distributed ledger technology – aka Blockchain – can be used to secure digitally-enabled critical infrastructure. Together they are providing an early warning system that embedded sensors have been compromised.

Cities around the globe are under increasing pressure to deliver high quality services to a growing number of citizens. Digital technology is being adopted – in what is sometimes called the ‘smart-city’ – to better manage assets, and deepen understanding of key services like waste, water, power and transport.

How we can secure critical infrastructure against zero-day hacks

A post by Dr Tingting Li, Research Associate at the Institute for Security Science & Technology.

As detailed in the recent Alex Gibney documentary Zero Days: Nuclear Cyber Sabotage, the Stuxnet worm caused havoc in an Iranian nuclear facility by exploiting unknown – and hence unprotected – weaknesses in the computer control system; so called zero-day weaknesses.

At Imperial ISST we’ve shown that the risk of a cyber-attack like Stuxnet being successful can be reduced by strategically defending the known weaknesses. We can model the relative risks in the system without foreknowledge of potential zero-day weaknesses, and maximise security by focusing defences on higher impact risks.

Worms, birds and insects inspire the robots of the future

A post by Dr Silvia Ardila-Jiménez, Post-doctoral Research Associate, Imperial College London

The development of autonomous systems is one of the technology trends driving the fourth industrial revolution. Autonomous systems in transportation are perhaps the most widely talked about, but beyond this we’re already seeing systems deployed in sectors like environmental monitoring and agriculture.

The range of potential applications is huge: search and rescue, border surveillance, construction, energy, health, sports and recreation, agriculture, and food and water security to name a few. And whilst advances in this area are vast – fueled by machine learning, data science, robotics etc. – no man-made system can perform at the level of living organisms.

The interaction between safety and security

A post by Professor Chris Hankin, Director ISST

Increasing digitization has led to convergence between IT (Information Technology) used in offices and mobile devices, and OT (Operational Technology) that controls devices used in critical infrastructure and industrial control systems. The IoT (Internet of Things) is also rapidly growing, with around 10 billion devices today.

These trends raise concerns about the interaction between safety and security. The reality of the threat has been highlighted in national news coverage, from cyber security vulnerabilities being exploited to compromise vehicle safety, to denial of service attacks launched from consumer devices.

Discussions are sometimes hampered by the lack of clear definitions of the concepts.