PCSCI 2021

International Workshop on Physical and Cyber Security in Interdependent Critical Infrastructures (PCSCI 2021)

to be held in the conjunction with the ARES workshops EU Projects Symposium 2021 at 16 ^th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security
(ARES 2021 – http://www.ares-conference.eu )

August 17 – August 20, 2021, Vienna, Austria

Over the last decade, critical infrastructures (CIs) have become more and more interconnected with and interdependent on each other and have evolved into highly complex CI networks. In particular when looking at metropolitan areas, where thousands or even millions of people live in a geographically narrow space, the uninterrupted and failure-free operation of those CIs is vital to maintain essential services and the social life. One of the core issues driving these interdependencies among CIs is the digitalization trend across multiple sectors and the accompanying fusion of the physical and the cyber space. This increasing number of interacting cyber-physical systems open up new threat vectors, which make them vulnerable to attacks from different domains. Thus, a holistic view on CIs and their interdependencies becomes more important to identify potential threats from the physical and the cyber domains.

This workshop aims at bringing together security experts from different fields and discuss about novel concepts and approaches to tackle current issues in CI protection. In this context, we want to look at the potential cascading effects an incident within a CI might have on dependent infrastructures, economy as well as the people living in a metropolitan area. Besides results from theoretical work, we would also encourage the presentation of technological solutions (e.g., prototypes) implementing those methodologies as well as use case scenarios and empirical studies, which provide insights in real-life applications and the occurring problems.

Related Projects:

PRAETORIAN (H2020): PRAETORIAN strategic goal is to increase the security and resilience of European CIs, facilitating the coordinated protection of interrelated CI against combined physical and cyber threats. To that end, the project will provide a multidimensional (economical, technological, policy, societal) yet installation-specific toolset comprising: (i) a Physical Situation Awareness system, (ii) a Cyber Situation Awareness system; (iii) a Hybrid Situation Awareness system, which will include digital twins of the infrastructure under protection; and (iv) a Coordinated Response system. The PRAETORIAN toolset will support the security managers of Critical Infrastructures (CI) in their decision making to anticipate and withstand potential cyber, physical or combined security threats to their own infrastructures and other interrelated CIs that could have a severe impact on their performance and/or the security of the population in their vicinity. The project will specifically tackle (i.e. prevent, detect, response and, in case of a declared attack, mitigate) human-made cyber and physical attacks or natural disasters affecting CIs. It will also address how an attack or incident in a specific CI can jeopardise the normal operation of other neighbouring/interrelated CIs, and how to make all of them more resilient, by predicting cascading effects and proposing a unified response among CIs and assisting First Responder teams.

TOPICS OF INTEREST INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

• Physical & Cyber Threats in Critical Infrastructures
• Assessing Threats and Risks in Critical Infrastructures
• Security Aspects of Cyber-Physical Systems
• Concepts and Solutions for Physical & Cyber Situational Awareness
• Simulating the Propagation of Threats and their Impacts
• Concepts towards Hybrid Situational Awareness
• Identifying and Measuring Impacts on the Society
• Identifying and Measuring Cascading Effects
• Emergency Population Warning Systems
• Legislative Aspects for Critical Infrastructures under GDPR and the NIS Directive

Important Dates

PROGRAM CHAIRS/WORKSHOP CHAIRS

Stefan Schauer , AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, AT
stefan.schauer@ait.ac.at

Eva Maria Muñoz Navarro , ETRA Investigación y Desarrollo S.A., ES
emunoz.etraid@grupoetra.com

Stefan Rass , University of Klagenfurt, AT
stefan.rass@aau.at

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Stefan Schauer, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, AT
Eva Maria Muñoz Navarro, ETRA Investigación y Desarrollo S.A., ES
Stefan Rass, University of Klagenfurt, AT
Frédéric Guyomard, EDF R&D

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The submission guidelines valid for the workshop are the same as for the ARES conference. They can be found at https://www.ares-conference.eu/conference/submission/ .