Modern industrial equipment are networked to interact with both internal and external systems, enabling automated decision-making with minimal or no human intervention. While this new environment creates efficiencies, it exposes the environment to cyber threats. This chapter explores the use of cybersecurity testbeds to study best practices in architecting and defending environments that contain industrial systems. Cybersecurity testbeds – physical, virtual, and hybrid – are used in different sectors for research and validation. Virtual testbeds hold promise as they enable design flexibility, reconfiguration, and scale to support various types of research studies. This chapter discusses the value of virtual cybersecurity testbeds and demonstrates a case study on the use of virtual testbeds using a simple industrial control system and a common attack. The concepts apply to more complex set ups and more complex attack structures. Virtual cybersecurity testbed can support researchers, practitioners, and educators interested in defending critical infrastructure environments and industrial systems.
This poster disseminated a National Science Foundation-funded study that examined the challenges faced by research enterprise professionals in supporting social science research funding, with particular attention to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Primarily Undergraduate Institutions. (PUIs). Using focus groups and a national survey, participants identified barriers and promising solutions. Findings highlight the dedication of professionals in this field and the potential for innovative strategies to strengthen and expand social science research across institutions.
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This presentation was created to share the preliminary results of this study, NSF #2324585, at the 2024 National Council of University Research Administrators
Annual Meeting.
Today's industrial equipment is connected over a network to communicate with external systems and make decisions without human intervention, making it vulnerable to cyberattacks and showing the importance of research. This study explored the implementation of a cloud-based virtual testbed for a smart factory for cybersecurity testing and research. As a first step, this paper reports on developing an environment with one programmable logic controller (PLC) simulating a conveyor belt setup. The study examined different virtualization platforms and network designs. In addition, it executed a denial-of-service attack and identified its signature indicators. The study found that VMware Workstation Pro is the most suitable virtualization platform and that network input and output are the DoS attack's signature indicators.
