Defense as a Service Cloud for Cyber-Physical Systems

Modernizing our critical infrastructure often involves upgrades with Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) to enhance efficiency, safety and reliability. New security and resilience challenges arise given the mission- and time-critical nature of CPS applications. Herby, we present CyPhyCARD (Cooperative Autonomous Resilient Defense platform for CPS) as a resilient secure defense cloud. The foundation of CyPhyCARD is our Cell-Oriented Architecture (COA) that enables distributed, dynamically configurable, and runtime-programmable platforms. COA comprises composable intrinsically resilient, active components termed “Cells” that dynamically manage heterogeneous resources and executable software code variants to execute CyPhyCARD defense missions. CyPhyCARD uses our generic Evolutionary Sensory system (EvoSense) to circulate context-driven, functionally customizable sensors and effectors through the target of defense (TOD). EvoSense provides cooperative autonomous control and sharing amongst interconnected defense service providers (CyPhyCARD) and/or their ToD to enhance attack detection and deterrence. CyPhyCARD uses our ChameleonSoft system to secure its infrastructure. ChameleonSoft is a multidimensional software diversity system that autonomously induces runtime confusion and diffusion thereby, in effect, encrypting the spatiotemporal software behavior and realizing a moving target defense. CyPhyCARD is designed to increase the attacker cost through persistently asymmetric operations.