The New Old Discipline of Cyber Security Engineering
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The New Old Discipline of Cyber Security Engineering Thomas A. Fuhrman Senior Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton, Herndon, VA, USA Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security Abstract - Although cyber security engineering is an jointly sponsor a program to designate schools whose established and diverse engineering field, it is not widely curriculums meet certain standards as Centers of Academic understood, and is under-applied in practice. The large and Excellence in Information Assurance Education. Yet while growing need to secure IT networks has been the primary these and other programs are making progress in increasing driver across society in developing the cyber security the cyber workforce, the demand continues to outpace supply. workforce from high school through college and in the continuing education programs of industry and professional The body of knowledge for cyber security today is societies. However, this emphasis on building the workforce unquestionably centered on enterprise networks and IT skills for securing IT networks neglects the distinct technical systems. In fact, what is striking about the qualifications and skills needed to secure complex systems other than traditional deployment of cyber security practitioners is that only a small IT systems. This paper focuses on the urgent need for the percentage is focused beyond IT networks. This emphasis on discipline of cyber security engineering and its relevance to securing traditional IT systems is not misplaced, but it is these complex systems, using mis-use case analysis as an important to realize that systems other than traditional IT also example of systems engineering methods that can be have critical and often distinct cyber security needs. Those employed. systems are the purpose-built systems that exist to perform functions in the physical world—tasks other than pure data Keywords: security engineering, systems engineering, cyber, processing. This includes a large class of systems called by mis-use case, tradeoff analysis names such as closed-loop systems, embedded systems, complex systems, realtime systems, realworld systems, distributed systems, and unmanned systems. Specific 1 Introduction examples include power grids, smart cars, aircraft, air traffic The growing recognition of the threat that hackers pose management systems, manufacturing process control systems, to IT networks and the enterprise data that they hold and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, process has attracted a great number of professionals to the oil drilling platforms, nuclear power plants, autonomous field of cyber security. This workforce is widely deployed underwater vehicles, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), against the difficult task of protecting IT systems and space vehicles, healthcare tools and systems including software, corporate network infrastructures, and network implantable medical devices, military weaponry, and a great resources (e.g., “clouds”). Because this challenge requires a many others. These systems are designed to perform specific wide range of different skills, the cyber security workforce is functions in the physical realm rather than in cyberspace, highly diverse. Professional cyber security practitioners range though certainly onboard computing and external network from entry-level analysts to experienced System Security interfaces are almost universally critical to their functions. Engineers with multiple professional certifications. Managers In the absence of an accepted all-encompassing term, often view this set of specialists as the cyber “experts” in the the term “mission systems” is used here in referring to this organization, to be brought in when problems occur on the class of systems.1 network, sometimes without regard to their particular expertise. Assigning people with the right skill levels to the right positions is uneven in both government and industry. [1, 2 The Cyber Challenge for Mission 2, 3] Systems Compounding the cyber security challenge is that there The cyber challenge for mission systems today has two are not enough cyber security professionals in the workforce. dimensions. First, buyers and owners of mission systems Many reports describe how the nation is critically short of often do not have sufficient appreciation of the threats facing people with these skills. [4, 5] Since the late-1990s, the U.S. their systems in the cyber realm and the damage they can government has made a concerted effort to increase the size and depth of this workforce by establishing numerous 1 Many such mission systems, including those that are termed programs aimed at increasing the pipeline of qualified cyber “critical infrastructures,” have connections to IT networks for the security professionals. Cybersecurity scholarship programs purpose of control and communication. In these cases, the IT have been set up across the civil agencies and within the network provides the automated control of the realworld system— Department of Defense. Additionally, the National Security reflecting Norbert Wiener’s original usage of the term cybernetics, from which today’s word cyber is derived. [6] inflict. Second, the cyber security workforce has difficulty disciplines and domains, especially power systems specialists delivering its expertise in ways that are compatible with the in this case, and to take a broad systems view of cyber risks. main engineering effort so that the overworked adage about For mission systems, the cyber engineer needs to know the security being “built in, not bolted on” can be realized. systems engineering process, the tools used, and the artifacts produced. 2.1 The Buyer/Owner Dimension There have been many cases in recent years in which cyber vulnerabilities in mission systems were only discovered when they were exploited. Recent newsworthy examples include the 2011 case of the in-theater military UAS sensor system whose live streaming intelligence video was intercepted by the adversary using software downloaded from the Internet; the 2011 landing in Iran of a classified UAS, which at least one Iranian engineer claimed was achieved by cutting the command link and changing the vehicle’s GPS position; and the widespread reporting in 2010 of a sophisticated virus that targeted computers of the Siemens product line for managing large-scale industrial control systems used by manufacturing and utility companies. Further, a 2007 test conducted by the Idaho National Laboratory proved that the so-called “Aurora Vulnerability” in a certain class of large electric generators and turbines that serve the U.S. power grid could in fact be exploited in a way that would lead to their physical self-destruction. [7, 8, 9] These events and others like them indicate that the cyber security community often has had too small a voice in the design decisions made in the development of mission systems. But cyber security needs have not been ignored totally, and there is widespread agreement on the general concept that cyber security engineering should be part of a broader system engineering effort. In the Department of Defense, for example, cyber security for mission systems is called out in certain areas, such as in the cyber security policy for space systems, which says that Information Assurance Figure 1. Smart Grid Cyber Security Engineering Tasks (IA) ‘shall be applied in a balanced manner by performing One aspect of cyber security engineering that Information System Security Engineering (ISSE) as an differentiates it from other engineering fields is that its focus integral part of the space system architecture and system is primarily (though not exclusively) on the potential engineering process to address all IA requirements in the disruption of system performance caused by the deliberate intended operational environment.’ [10] actions of human actors intent on doing harm. Designing for security is different in this way from designing against Similarly, the National Institute of Standards and environmental effects, unreliable components, or external Technology (NIST) has developed draft guidelines for hazards. The unique value that the cyber expert can bring to securing the vastly complex and emerging Smart Grid. [11] an engineering effort is a technical understanding of the threat The three-volume guidelines document describes a set of and an ability to identify potential vulnerabilities in the tasks for assessing cyber security issues and identifying cyber mission system that could be exploited by the threat, as well security requirements. (See Figure 1.) It also contains top- as the range of options for mitigating the risk posed by the level security requirements for the smart grid and defines the threat. logical reference model for interfaces and interactions between the organizations, buildings, individuals, systems, Figure 2 shows some of the threat vectors that mission and devices that make up the Smart Grid domains. The systems need to address. Additionally, cyber security amount of content alone is an indication of the magnitude of considerations can lead to requirements for implementing the cyber challenge in this highly complex mission system. special features such as a command disable function or anti- tamper technologies to guard against compromise and reverse The cyber security engineer cannot effectively work in engineering if the system is physically exploited. isolation. These tasks clearly require the cyber security engineer to work side-by-side with engineers from other mission systems, are not