Protecting critical infrastructure against cascading effects: The PRECINCT approach

Abstract

Critical Infrastructures (CIs), which serve as the foundation of our modern society, are facing increasing risks from cyber threats, physical attacks, and natural disasters. Additionally, the interdependencies between CIs throughout their operational lifespan can also significantly impact their integrity and safety. As a result, enhancing the resilience of CIs has emerged as a top priority for many countries, including the European Union. This involves not only understanding the threats/attacks themselves but also gaining knowledge about the areas and infrastructures that could potentially be affected. A European Union-funded project named PRECINCT (Preparedness and Resilience Enforcement for Critical INfrastructure Cascading Cyber-Physical Threats), under the Horizon 2020 program, tries to connect private and public stakeholders of CIs in a specific geographical area. The key objective of this project is to establish a common cyber-physical security management approach that will ensure the protection of both citizens and infrastructures, creating a secure territory. This paper presents the components of PRECINCT, including a directory of PRECINCT Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) blueprints. These blueprints support CI communities in designing integrated ecosystems, operating and replicating PRECINCT components (or toolkits). The integration enables coordinated security and resilience management, incorporating improved 'installation-specific' security solutions. Additionally, Serious Games (SG), and Digital Twins (DT) are a significant part of this project, serving as a novel vulnerability evaluation method for analysing complicated multi-system cascading effects in the PRECINCT Living Labs (LLs). The use of SG supports the concentrated advancement of innovative resilience enhancement services.

Keywords

Critical infrastructure protection / Serious games / Digital twins / Blueprints / OASIS TOSCA / Industry 4.0 / Resilience / Interdependencies / Cyber-physical

Relevance to resilience

This paper presents a novel approach to improving the resilience of critical infrastructures using serious games and digital twins. The provided framework presents a holistic approach to critical infrastructure security and resilience management by considering the interdependencies between critical infrastructures and the potential for cascading effects. The serious game and digital twin components of the framework are particularly relevant to resilience in the following ways:

•Serious games provide a novel and engaging platform for training emergency responders and critical infrastructure operators on how to respond to cyber-physical attacks and other disruptions. This helps to improve their preparedness and response capabilities, which is essential for mitigating the impacts of disruptive events on critical infrastructures.

•Digital twins provide a realistic simulation environment for assessing the resilience of critical infrastructures under different scenarios. This information can be used to develop and implement resilience enhancement measures, such as identifying and addressing critical vulnerabilities, developing contingency plans, and improving coordination between critical infrastructure operators.

In addition to the serious game and digital twin components, the presented framework also introduces other features that are relevant to resilience, such as:

•A methodological framework for quantifying resilience under different scenarios.

•Reusable critical infrastructure protection software assets through the blueprints.

Data availability

Due to security considerations, the inclusion of specific data in this paper is restricted, and we are prohibited from publishing it.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Meisam Gordan: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Djibrilla Amadou Kountche: Formal analysis, Software, Writing - review & editing. Daniel McCrum: Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Stefan Schauer: Data curation, Formal analysis. Sandra König: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization. Shirley Delannoy: Investigation, Project administration. Lorcan Connolly: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing. Mircea Iacob: Formal analysis, Software, Validation. Nicola Gregorio Durante: Formal analysis, Software, Validation. Yash Shekhawat: Software, Validation, Visualization. Carlos Carrasco: Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation. Takis Katsoulakos: Investigation, Resources. Páraic Carroll: Funding acquisition, Resources, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

PRECINCT is funded by the European Commission, Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101021668.

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