Recent high profile cyber attacks on critical infrastructures have raised awareness about the severe and widespread impacts that these attacks can have on everyday life. This awareness has increased the demand for cyber resilient critical infrastructure and for proof that proposed mitigations actually increase resilience. In this presentation, we will discuss an approach to cyber modeling and experimentation that we are using at Sandia National Laboratories to analyze the resilience of industrial control systems. The approach leverages virtual cyber testbeds, threat emulation, and resilience metrics to provide quantitative resilience evaluations. Demonstration of the platform and analysis process are illustrated through a use case involving the control system for a pressurized water reactor.

Funding statement: Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Dr. Eric Vugrin is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in the Cyber Resilience Research and Development Department at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His research spans nearly two decades and focuses on the development of analytical tools and methods for modeling, analyzing, and designing resilience in complex systems. Cyber and space systems are his current primary applications of interest, and he has previously worked on supply chains, public health systems, power systems, transportation networks, and other critical infrastructures. His work has provided support and guidance to research, operations, and policy groups at the US Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, Energy, and other agencies. Recognition for his research includes the US Department of Energy Secretary’s Appreciation Award and an R&D 100 Award, recognizing the Canary event-detection software as one of the 100 most technologically significant products of 2010. Previous to his work on critical infrastructures, Dr. Vugrin performed risk analyses as Sandia’s technical lead for total systems performance assessment at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the world’s only certified, deep-underground repository for nuclear waste.

Dr. Vugrin co-authored the book Critical Infrastructure System Security and Resiliency; more than 50 book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers; and more than 80 technical reports. He earned his PhD in mathematics from Virginia Tech.