This article analyzes Risk management (RM) activities against different ISO standards. The aim is to improve the coordination and interoperability of risk management activities in IT, IT services management, quality management, project management, and information security management. The ISO 31000: 2018 standard was chosen as a structured input for ISO 20000-1: 2018, ISO 21500: 2021, ISO 27000: 2018, ISO 9001: 2015 and ISO Annex SL standards relative to RM. The PDCA cycle has been chosen as one of the main methods for planning, implementing, and improving quality management systems and their processes. For a management system to be more effective, more reliable, and capable of preventing negative results, it must deal with the possible resulting risks.
Authored by Varbinka Stefanova-Stoyanova, Petko Danov
Information Technology (IT) governance crosses the organization practices, culture, and policy that support IT management in controlling five key functions, which are strategic alignment, performance management, resource management, value delivery, and risk management. The line of sight is extended from the corporate strategy to the risk management, and risk controls are assessed against operational goals. Thus, the risk management model is concerned with ensuring that the corporate risks are sufficiently controlled and managed. Many organizations rely on IT services to facilitate and sustain their operations, which mandate the existence of a risk management model in their IT governance. This paper examines prior research based on IT governance by using a risk management framework. It also proposes a new method for calculating and classifying IT-related risks. Additionally, we assessed our technique with one of the critical IT services that proves the reliability and accuracy of the implemented model.
Authored by Razan Boodai, Hadeel Alessa, Arwa Alanazi
The article deals with the issues of improving the quality of corporate information systems functioning and ensuring the information security of financial organizations that have a complex structure and serve a significant number of customers. The formation of the company's informational system and its integrated information security system is studied based on the process approach, methods of risk management and quality management. The risks and threats to the security of the informational system functioning and the quality of information support for customer service of a financial organization are analyzed. The methods and tools for improving the quality of information services and ensuring information security are considered on the example of an organization for social insurance. Recommendations are being developed to improve the quality of the informational system functioning in a large financial company.
Authored by Marina Tokareva, Anton Kublitskii, Natalia Telyatnikova, Anatoly Rogov, Ilya Shkolnik
NiNSRAPM: An Ensemble Learning Based Non-intrusive Network Security Risk Assessment Prediction Model
Cybersecurity insurance is one of the important means of cybersecurity risk management and the development of cyber insurance is inseparable from the support of cyber risk assessment technology. Cyber risk assessment can not only help governments and organizations to better protect themselves from related risks, but also serve as a basis for cybersecurity insurance underwriting, pricing, and formulating policy content. Aiming at the problem that cybersecurity insurance companies cannot conduct cybersecurity risk assessments on policyholders before the policy is signed without the authorization of the policyholder or in legal, combining with the need that cybersecurity insurance companies want to obtain network security vulnerability risk profiles of policyholders conveniently, quickly and at low cost before the policy signing, this study proposed a non-intrusive network security vulnerability risk assessment method based on ensemble machine learning. Our model uses only open source intelligence and publicly available network information data to rate cyber vulnerability risk of an organization, achieving an accuracy of 70.6% compared to a rating based on comprehensive information by cybersecurity experts.
Authored by Jun-Zheng Yang, Feng Liu, Yuan-Jie Zhao, Lu-Lu Liang, Jia-Yin Qi
This document takes an in-depth approach to identify WhatsApp's Security risk management, governance and controls. WhatsApp is a communication mobile application that is available on both android and IOS, recently acquired by Facebook and allows us to stay connected. This document identifies all necessary assets, threats, vulnerabilities, and risks to WhatsApp and further provides mitigations and security controls to possibly utilize and secure the application.
Authored by Rida Khan, Salma Barakat, Lulwah AlAbduljabbar, Yara AlTayash, Nofe AlMussa, Maryam AlQattan, Nor Jamail
Currently, many organizations are moving to new digital management systems, which is accompanied not only by the introduction of new approaches based on the use of information technology, but also by a change in the organizational and management environment. Risk management is a process necessary to maintain the competitive advantage of an organization, but it can also become involved in the course of digitalization itself, which means that risk management also needs to change to meet modern conditions and ensure the effectiveness of the organization. This article discusses the risk management process in the digital environment. The main approach to the organization of this process is outlined, taking into account the use of information tools, together with the stages of this process, which directly affect the efficiency of the company. The risks that are specific to a digital organization are taken into account. Modern requirements for risk management for organizations are studied, ways of their implementation are outlined. The result is a risk management process that functions in a digital organization.
Authored by Egor Mandrakov, Diana Dudina, Vicror Vasiliev, Mark Aleksandrov
Effective information security risk management is essential for survival of any business that is dependent on IT. In this paper we present an efficient and effective solution to find best parameters for managing cyber risks using artificial intelligence. Genetic algorithm is use as it can provide our required optimization and intelligence. Results show that GA is professional in finding the best parameters and minimizing the risk.
Authored by Osama Hosam
Cybersecurity attacks, which have many business impacts, continuously become more intelligent and complex. These attacks take the form of a combination of various attack elements. APT attacks reflect this characteristic well. To defend against APT attacks, organizations should sufficiently understand these attacks based on the attack elements and their relations and actively defend against these attacks in multiple dimensions. Most organizations perform risk management to manage their information security. Generally, they use the information system risk assessment (ISRA). However, the method has difficulties supporting sufficiently analyzing security risks and actively responding to these attacks due to the limitations of asset-driven qualitative evaluation activities. In this paper, we propose a threat-driven risk assessment method. This method can evaluate how dangerous APT attacks are for an organization, analyze security risks from multiple perspectives, and support establishing an adaptive security strategy.
Authored by Sihn-Hye Park, Seok-Won Lee
The electrical grid connects all the generating stations to supply uninterruptible power to the consumers. With the advent of technology, smart sensors and communication are integrated with the existing grid to behave like a smart system. This smart grid is a two-way communication that connects the consumers and producers. It is a connected smart network that integrates electricity generation, transmission, substation, distribution, etc. In this smart grid, clean, reliable power with a high-efficiency rate of transmission is available. In this paper, a highly efficient smart management system of a smart grid with overall protection is proposed. This management system checks and monitors the parameters periodically. This future technology also develops a smart transformer with ac and dc compatibility, for self-protection and for the healing process.
Authored by Achhi Pradyumna, Sai Kuthadi, Ananda Kumar, N. Karuppiah
In order to solve the problem of high data collision probability, high access delay and high-power consumption in random access process of power Internet of Things, an access scheme for large-scale micro-power wireless sensors based on slot-scheduling and hybrid mode is presented. This scheme divides time into different slots and designs a slot-scheduling algorithm according to network workload and power consumption. Sensors with different service priorities are arranged in different time slots for competitive access, using appropriate random-access mechanism. And rationally arrange the number of time slots and competing end-devices in different time slots. This scheme is able to meet the timeliness requirements of different services and reduce the overall network power consumption when dealing with random access scenarios of large-scale micro-power wireless sensor network. Based on the simulation results of actual scenarios, this access scheme can effectively reduce the overall power consumption of the network, and the high priority services can meet the timeliness requirements on the premise of lower power consumption, while the low priority services can further reduce power consumption.
Authored by Di Zhai, Yang Lu, Rui Shi, Yuejie Ji
Traditional power consumption management systems are not showing enough reliability and thus, smart grid technology has been introduced to reduce the excess power wastages. In the context of smart grid systems, network communication is another term that is used for developing the network between the users and the load profiles. Cloud computing and clustering are also executed for efficient power management. Based on the facts, this research is going to identify wireless network communication systems to monitor and control smart grid power consumption. Primary survey-based research has been carried out with 62 individuals who worked in the smart grid system, tracked, monitored and controlled the power consumptions using WSN technology. The survey was conducted online where the respondents provided their opinions via a google survey form. The responses were collected and analyzed on Microsoft Excel. Results show that hybrid commuting of cloud and edge computing technology is more advantageous than individual computing. Respondents agreed that deep learning techniques will be more beneficial to analyze load profiles than machine learning techniques. Lastly, the study has explained the advantages and challenges of using smart grid network communication systems. Apart from the findings from primary research, secondary journal articles were also observed to emphasize the research findings.
Authored by Santosh Kumar, N Kumar, B.T. Geetha, M. Sangeetha, Kalyan Chakravarthi, Vikas Tripathi
This article describes an analysis of the key technologies currently applied to improve the quality, efficiency, safety and sustainability of Smart Grid systems and identifies the tools to optimize them and possible gaps in this area, considering the different energy sources, distributed generation, microgrids and energy consumption and production capacity. The research was conducted with a qualitative methodological approach, where the literature review was carried out with studies published from 2019 to 2022, in five (5) databases following the selection of studies recommended by the PRISMA guide. Of the five hundred and four (504) publications identified, ten (10) studies provided insight into the technological trends that are impacting this scenario, namely: Internet of Things, Big Data, Edge Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. It is concluded that to obtain the best performance within Smart Grids, it is necessary to have the maximum synergy between these technologies, since this union will enable the application of advanced smart digital technology solutions to energy generation and distribution operations, thus allowing to conquer a new level of optimization.
Authored by Ivonne Núñez, Elia Cano, Carlos Rovetto, Karina Ojo-Gonzalez, Andrzej Smolarz, Juan Saldana-Barrios
For some countries around the world, meeting demand is a serious concern. Power supply market is increasingly increasing, posing a big challenge for various countries throughout the world. The increasing expansion in the market for power needs upgrading system dependability to increase the smart grid's resilience. This smart electric grid has a sensor that analyses grid power availability and sends regular updates to the organisation. The internet is currently being utilized to monitor processes and place orders for running variables from faraway places. A large number of scanners have been used to activate electrical equipment for domestic robotics for a long period in the last several days. Conversely, if it is not correctly implemented, it will have a negative impact on cost-effectiveness as well as productivity. For something like a long time, home automation has relied on a large number of sensor nodes to control electrical equipment. Since there are so many detectors, this isn't cost-effective. In this article, develop and accept a wireless communication component and a management system suitable for managing independent efficient network units from voltage rises and voltage control technologies in simultaneous analyzing system reliability in this study. This research paper has considered secondary method to collect relevant and in-depth data related to the wireless sensor network and its usage in smart grid monitoring.
Authored by Ch. Kumar, Ganesh Dixit, Rajesh Singh, Bharath Narukullapati, Kalyan Chakravarthi, Durgaprasad Gangodkar
In view of the problems that the existing power grid risk assessment mainly depends on the data fusion of decision-making level, which has strong subjectivity and less effective information, this paper proposes a risk assessment method of microgrid system based on random matrix theory. Firstly, the time series data of multiple sensors are constructed into a high-dimensional matrix according to the different parameter types and nodes; Then, based on random matrix theory and sliding time window processing, the average spectral radius sequence is calculated to characterize the state of microgrid system. Finally, an example is given to verify the effectiveness of the method.
Authored by Xi Cheng, Yafeng Liang, Jianhong Qiu, XiaoLi Zhao, Lihong Ma
Current sensors are widely used in power grid for power metering, automation and power equipment monitoring. Since the tradeoff between the sensitivity and the measurement range needs to be made to design a current sensor, it is difficult to deploy one sensor to measure both the small-magnitude and the large-magnitude current. In this research, we design a surface-mount current sensor by using the tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR) devices and show that the tradeoff between the sensitivity and the detection range can be broken. Two TMR devices of different sensitivity degrees were integrated into one current sensor module, and a signal processing algorithm was implemented to fusion the outputs of the two TMR devices. Then, a platform was setup to test the performance of the surface-mount current sensor. The results showed that the designed current sensor could measure the current from 2 mA to 100 A with an approximate 93 dB dynamic range. Besides, the nonintrusive feature of the surface-mount current sensor could make it convenient to be deployed on-site.
Authored by Sen Qian, Hui Deng, Chuan Chen, Hui Huang, Yun Liang, Jinghong Guo, Zhengyong Hu, Wenrong Si, Hongkang Wang, Yunjia Li
Smart grid is the next generation for power generation, consumption and distribution. However, with the introduction of smart communication in such sensitive components, major risks from cybersecurity perspective quickly emerged. This survey reviews and reports on the state-of-the-art techniques for detecting cyber attacks in smart grids, mainly through machine learning techniques.
Authored by Ahmad Alkuwari, Saif Al-Kuwari, Marwa Qaraqe
Satisfying the growing demand for electricity is a huge challenge for electricity providers without a robust and good infrastructure. For effective electricity management, the infrastructure has to be strengthened from the generation stage to the transmission and distribution stages. In the current electrical infrastructure, the evolution of smart grids provides a significant solution to the problems that exist in the conventional system. Enhanced management visibility and better monitoring and control are achieved by the integration of wireless sensor network technology in communication systems. However, to implement these solutions in the existing grids, the infrastructural constraints impose a major challenge. Along with the choice of technology, it is also crucial to avoid exorbitant implementation costs. This paper presents a self-stabilizing hierarchical algorithm for the existing electrical network. Neighborhood Area Networks (NAN) and Home Area Networks (HAN) layers are used in the proposed architecture. The Home Node (HN), Simple Node (SN) and Cluster Head (CH) are the three types of nodes used in the model. Fraudulent users in the system are identified efficiently using the proposed model based on the observations made through simulation on OMNeT++ simulator.
Authored by Emayashri G, Harini R, Abirami V, Benedict M
The electromagnetic energy harvesting technology is a new and effective way to supply power to the condition monitoring sensors installed on or near the transmission line. We will use Computer Simulation Technology Software to simulate the different designs of stand-alone electromagnetic energy harvesters The power generated by energy harvesters of different design structures is compared and analyzed through simulation and experimental results. We then propose an improved design of energy harvester.
Authored by Guowei An, Congzheng Han, Fugui Zhang, Kun Liu
Aiming at the prevention of information security risk in protection and control of smart substation, a multi-level security defense method of substation based on data aggregation and convolution neural network (CNN) is proposed. Firstly, the intelligent electronic device(IED) uses "digital certificate + digital signature" for the first level of identity authentication, and uses UKey identification code for the second level of physical identity authentication; Secondly, the device group of the monitoring layer judges whether the data report is tampered during transmission according to the registration stage and its own ID information, and the device group aggregates the data using the credential information; Finally, the convolution decomposition technology and depth separable technology are combined, and the time factor is introduced to control the degree of data fusion and the number of input channels of the network, so that the network model can learn the original data and fused data at the same time. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively save communication overhead, ensure the reliable transmission of messages under normal and abnormal operation, and effectively improve the security defense ability of smart substation.
Authored by Dong Liu, Yingwei Zhu, Haoliang Du, Lixiang Ruan
The attacker’s server plays an important role in sending attack orders and receiving stolen information, particularly in the more recent cyberattacks. Under these circumstances, it is important to use network-based signatures to block malicious communications in order to reduce the damage. However, in addition to blocking malicious communications, signatures are also required not to block benign communications during normal business operations. Therefore, the generation of signatures requires a high level of understanding of the business, and highly depends on individual skills. In addition, in actual operation, it is necessary to test whether the generated signatures do not interfere with benign communications, which results in high operational costs. In this paper, we propose SIGMA, a system that automatically generates signatures to block malicious communication without interfering with benign communication and then automatically evaluates the impact of the signatures. SIGMA automatically extracts the common parts of malware communication destinations by clustering them and generates multiple candidate signatures. After that, SIGMA automatically calculates the impact on normal communication based on business logs, etc., and presents the final signature to the analyst, which has the highest blockability of malicious communication and non-blockability of normal communication. Our objectives with this system are to reduce the human factor in generating the signatures, reduce the cost of the impact evaluation, and support the decision of whether to apply the signatures. In the preliminary evaluation, we showed that SIGMA can automatically generate a set of signatures that detect 100% of suspicious URLs with an over-detection rate of just 0.87%, using the results of 14,238 malware analyses and actual business logs. This result suggests that the cost for generation of signatures and the evaluation of their impact on business operations can be suppressed, which used to be a time-consuming and human-intensive process.
Authored by Shota Fujii, Nobutaka Kawaguchi, Shoya Kojima, Tomoya Suzuki, Toshihiro Yamauchi
SaaS is a cloud-based application service that allows users to use applications that work in a cloud environment. SaaS is a subscription type, and the service expenditure varies depending on the license, the number of users, and duration of use. For efficient network management, security and cost management, accurate detection of user behavior for SaaS applications is required. In this paper, we propose a rule-based traffic analysis method for the user behavior detection. We conduct comparative experiments with signature-based method by using the real SaaS application and demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.
Authored by Jee-Tae Park, Ui-Jun Baek, Myung-Sup Kim, Min-Seong Lee, Chang-Yui Shin
With the proliferation of malware, the detection and classification of malware have been hot topics in the academic and industrial circles of cyber security, and the generation of malware signatures is one of the important research directions. In this paper, we propose NBP-MS, a method of signature generation that is based on network traffic generated by malware. Specifically, we utilize the network traffic generated by malware to perform fine-grained profiling of its network behaviors first, and then cluster all the profiles to generate network behavior signatures to classify malware, providing support for subsequent analysis and defense.
Authored by Zhixin Shi, Xiangyu Wang, Pengcheng Liu
Confidentiality and integrity security are the key challenges in future 5G networks. To encounter these challenges, various signature and key agreement protocols are being implemented in 5G systems to secure high-speed mobile-to-mobile communication. Many security ciphers such as SNOW 3G, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and ZUC are used for 5G security. Among these protocols, the AES algorithm has been shown to achieve higher hardware efficiency and throughput in the literature. In this paper, we implement the AES algorithm on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and real-time performance factors of the AES algorithm were exploited to best fit the needs and requirements of 5G. In addition, several modifications such as partial pipelining and deep pipelining (partial pipelining with sub-module pipelining) are implemented on Virtex 6 FPGA ML60S board to improve the throughput of the proposed design.
Authored by Usva Rahim, Muhammad Siddiqui, Muhammad Javed, Nazmus Nafi
A Cautionary Note on Protecting Xilinx’ UltraScale(+) Bitstream Encryption and Authentication Engine
FPGA bitstream protection schemes are often the first line of defense for secure hardware designs. In general, breaking the bitstream encryption would enable attackers to subvert the confidentiality and infringe on the IP. Or breaking the authenticity enables manipulating the design, e.g., inserting hardware Trojans. Since FPGAs see widespread use in our interconnected world, such attacks can lead to severe damages, including physical harm. Recently we [1] presented a surprising attack — Starbleed — on Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs, tricking an FPGA into acting as a decryption oracle. For their UltraScale(+) series, Xilinx independently upgraded the security features to AES-GCM, RSA signatures, and a periodic GHASH-based checksum to validate the bitstream during decryption. Hence, UltraScale(+) devices were considered not affected by Starbleed-like attacks [2], [1].We identified novel security weaknesses in Xilinx UltraScale(+) FPGAs if configured outside recommended settings. In particular, we present four attacks in this situation: two attacks on the AES encryption and novel GHASH-based checksum and two authentication downgrade attacks. As a major contribution, we show that the Starbleed attack is still possible within the UltraScale(+) series by developing an attack against the GHASH-based checksum. After describing and analyzing the attacks, we list the subtle configuration changes which can lead to security vulnerabilities and secure configurations not affected by our attacks. As Xilinx only recommends configurations not affected by our attacks, users should be largely secure. However, it is not unlikely that users employ settings outside the recommendations, given the rather large number of configuration options and the fact that Security Misconfiguration is among the leading top 10 OWASP security issues. We note that these security weaknesses shown in this paper had been unknown before.
Authored by Maik Ender, Gregor Leander, Amir Moradi, Christof Paar
Smart cities deploy large numbers of sensors and collect a tremendous amount of data from them. For example, Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMIs), which consist of physical meters that collect usage data about public utilities such as power and water, are an important building block in a smart city. In a typical sensor network, the measurement devices are connected through a computer network, which exposes them to cyber attacks. Furthermore, the data is centrally managed at the operator’s servers, making it vulnerable to insider threats.Our goal is to protect the integrity of data collected by large-scale sensor networks and the firmware in measurement devices from cyber attacks and insider threats. To this end, we first develop a comprehensive threat model for attacks against data and firmware integrity, which can target any of the stakeholders in the operation of the sensor network. Next, we use our threat model to analyze existing defense mechanisms, including signature checks, remote firmware attestation, anomaly detection, and blockchain-based secure logs. However, the large size of the Trusted Computing Base and a lack of scalability limit the applicability of these existing mechanisms. We propose the Feather-Light Blockchain Infrastructure (FLBI) framework to address these limitations. Our framework leverages a two-layer architecture and cryptographic threshold signature chains to support large networks of low-capacity devices such as meters and data aggregators. We have fully implemented the FLBI’s end-to-end functionality on the Hyperledger Fabric and private Ethereum blockchain platforms. Our experiments show that the FLBI is able to support millions of end devices.
Authored by Daniël Reijsbergen, Aung Maw, Sarad Venugopalan, Dianshi Yang, Tien Dinh, Jianying Zhou