LSBU researchers are playing a key role in ensuring that some of the critical systems that keep us safe remain safe and secure from harm themselves.
Background Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are industrial control systems used to monitor critical infrastructures such as airports, transport, health and public services of national importance.They have a vital role to play in ensuring that our travel network and airports run smoothly. However, there is an increased need to run these services not on local servers, but on the cloud, which can increase data vulnerability.
Firstco are an Engineering Consultancy with a high level of involvement in underground rail projects and an impressive track record in the communication and control infrastructure market. In 2015, Professor Shushma Patel, together with her colleague Professor Dilip Patel, successfully secured a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Firstco to research cloud-hosted (virtualised) SCADA systems.
“The focus of our work was to investigate and understand potential threats to the increasingly open SCADA systems, as well as virtualisation of Firstco’s technologies and platforms to increase their presence in the lucrative market of process control in the transportation industry,” explains Professor Shushma Patel.
“At the outset of the project in 2015, Firstco were clear that for them to win new customers, they had to use virtualisation techniques to demonstrate their SCADA tools to potential clients.” The KTP associate hired for the project, Dr Sajid Nazir, worked with the two professors to develop knowledge about the virtualised SCADA systems in secure environments, and this work then directly informed the work of Firstco and their clients at Heathrow.
The KTP associate hired for the project, Dr Sajid Nazir,worked with the two professors to develop knowledge about the virtualised SCADA systems in secure environments, and this work then directly informed the work of Firstco and their clients at Heathrow.
“The virtualisation initiative led to us incorporating video and voice into the virtual SCADA system and to focus on security threats to critical national infrastructures,” adds Shushma.
“There were some challenges involved such as scoping complex scenarios and ascertaining how to incorporate cognitive computing technologies for predicting potential cyber threats, especially where there were limited datasets. The outcomes have been really positive though, and the team is currently active in advancing research in this area and the dissemination of our findings in publications.”
As a result of the KTP Firstco was successful in winning the contract for the new SCADA system for Heathrow Airports Baggage Handling System.
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