Toward Resilient Monitoring and Control of Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems

Presented as part of the 2014 HCSS conference.

Abstract:

Security and resilience of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is a significant problem due to wide deployment of commercial-off-the-self computing devices, network connectivity with the Internet, and the existence of organized, motivated attackers.  Our goal is to complement security mechanisms with resilient algorithms for monitoring and control. Distributed monitoring and control algorithms provide redundancy as well as increased rate and fidelity of information.  The agents share information in order to achieve specific group objectives, for example, consensus, formation control, synchronization, and distributed optimization.

This presentation describes a framework for design of resilient distributed protocols that are robust to adversarial attacks. The framework provides a theoretical characterization including conditions for stability and safety for arbitrary and dynamic network topologies.  Resilient protocols for heterogeneous networks that include trusted agents are also presented. Finally, we consider cryptographic mechanisms that ensure data integrity and we present a game-theoretic model for decreasing the computational cost incurred in the network through probabilistic authentication of messages.

Speaker Bio:

Xenofon Koutsoukos is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. He is also a Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS). Before joining Vanderbilt, Dr. Koutsoukos was a Member of Research Staff in the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) (2000-2002), working in the Embedded Collaborative Computing Area. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2000. His research work is in the area of cyber-physical systems with emphasis on formal methods, distributed algorithms, diagnosis and fault tolerance, and adaptive resource management. He has published numerous journal and conference papers and he is co-inventor of four US patents. He was the recipient of the NSF Career Award in 2004, the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009 from the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering, and the 2011 NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) Associate Administrator (AA) Award in Technology and Innovation.