SERSCIS

IT Innovation attended a CyberSecurity workshop hosted by SIGNATURE at PRIT 2010 in Paris. IT Innovation is a member of SITC, which is part of the SIGNATURE network.

Speakers at the event included representatives from UK Government Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance, French Government ANSSI, and industry: EADS, Thales and Sophos. The common message that the speakers gave was that an increased threat of cyberterrorism requires a commensurate increase in cyberdefence. However, systems are moving from ‘stovepipes’ to increasingly interconnected systems of systems (SoS). Efficient and effective cyberdefence of SoS requires the trustworthy federation of systems, so that emergency situations detected in the context of one system can be communicated to, understood by and, most importantly, trusted by other dependent systems.

Given the emphasis on cybersecurity, there was significant interest in the results of SERSCIS for managing critical infrastructure ICT interdependencies. Following the release of the Stuxnet worm that targets critical infrastructure (CI), there is an increasing awareness of such viruses that exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, which cannot be prevented on the day of release. Operators of CI are beginning to realise that cyberdefence must focus on describing the nature of their dependencies on other systems. Using SERSCIS would allow operators to monitor local CI as well as system interdependencies for behaviour that is indicative of an attack, so that they can react to it rapidly.