An Ontology-Driven Framework for Security and Resiliency in Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) can be described as an integration of computation and physical processes, where embedded systems monitor and control physical processes. Advances in technologies, such as networking and processors have enabled the adoption of CPS in safety-critical systems like smart grids and autonomous vehicles. Cyber-attacks, as the name suggests, target components in the cyber space with the intention of disrupting the functionality of the physical components. In this paper, we present an Ontology-driven framework that captures the relationship between cyber and physical systems to semantically reason about the impact of cyber-attacks on the physical systems. We demonstrate the idea using a reference Red-Light Violation Warning (RLVW) Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) network. Our proposed Ontology provides the ability to identify vulnerabilities in cyber systems that may impact a given physical system, enumerate potential mitigation steps and help design resilient physical systems that can meet their design specifications despite the occurrence of a cyber-attack.