Biblio

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are becoming increasingly susceptible to cyber-physical attacks on both physical and cyber layers of critical information infrastructure. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) have been widely used as a structured method to prioritize all possible vulnerable areas (failure modes) for design review of security of information systems. However, traditional RPN based FMEA has some inherent problems. Besides, there is a lacking of application of FMEA for security in SCADAs under vague and uncertain environment. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to propose a new evaluation model, which not only intends to recover above mentioned problems, but also intends to evaluate, prioritize and correct security risk of SCADA system's threat modes. A numerical case study was also conducted to demonstrate that the proposed new evaluation model is not only capable of addressing FMEA's inherent problems but also is best suited for a semi-quantitative high level analysis of a secure SCADA's failure modes in the early design phases.

In this study, the enactment of information security risk management by novice practitioners is studied by applying an analytical lens of security-related stress. Two organisations were targeted in the study using a case study approach to obtain data about their practices. The study identifies stressors and stress inhibitors in the ISRM process and the supporting ISRM tools and discusses the implications for practitioners. For example, a mismatch between security standards and how they are interpreted in practice has been identified. This mismatch was further found to be strengthened by the design of the used ISRM tools. Those design shortcomings hamper agility since they may enforce a specific workflow or may restrict documentation. The study concludes that security-related stress can provide additional insight into security-novice practitioners' ISRM challenges.

Establishing and operating an Information Security Management System (ISMS) to protect information values and information systems is in itself a challenge for larger enterprises and small and medium sized businesses alike. A high level of automation is required to reduce operational efforts to an acceptable level when implementing an ISMS. In this paper we present the ADAMANT framework to increase automation in information security management as a whole by establishing a continuous risk-driven and context-aware ISMS that not only automates security controls but considers all highly interconnected information security management tasks. We further illustrate how ADAMANT is suited to establish an ISO 27001 compliant ISMS for small and medium-sized enterprises and how not only the monitoring of security controls but a majority of ISMS related activities can be supported through automated process execution and workflow enactment.