Mo-Yuen Chow, co-author of the research and a professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the concept was like a “community watch,” where neighbors watch each other’s property for burglaries.
SCADA and PLC systems are used in industries comprising the nation’s critical infrastructure (CI), which includes power generation facilities, oil and gas pipelines, electric power transmitters and defense manufacturing.
Securing the nation’s critical infrastructure is difficult because most of the electronics and machinery was built before the Internet evolved as a networking protocol in controlling systems. In tackling the problem, NCSU researchers have developed an algorithm that can be deployed in any networked device, either in software or as firmware in a microcontroller.
The technology would augment traditional security systems used today, such as communication encryption and access controls, said Wente Zeng, a doctoral student and co-author of the research.
The researchers plan to present their paper (PDF), entitled “Convergence and Recovery Analysis of the Secure Distributed Control Methodology for D-NCS,” at the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics being held May 27-31 in Taipei, Taiwan.