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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Engineering in Cyber Resilience with Cyber-Informed Engineering

Engineers have super powers to provide cybersecurity resilience with deterministic engineering solutions and to protect systems from the most catastrophic consequences that a cyber saboteur could cause. Come to this session to learn how to use engineering risk management skills to harden your engineered systems from cyberattacks. Objective 1 Identify what system functions could be digitally induced to cause undesired high-impact consequences. Objective 2 Analyze how loss or instability of digital controls in a subsystem could lead to high-impact consequences. Objective 3 Analyze how loss or instability in the digital connectivity between systems could lead to high-impact consequences. Objective 4 Identify engineering controls which could build resilience by eliminating digital loss or instability pathways or reduce the impact of digital loss or instability. This presentation will introduce Cyber-Informed Engineering, described below, and walk participants through specific engineering use cases to show how engineers can consider the potential for cyber sabotage in their existing system designs and enact deterministic engineering-based controls which eliminate pathways for attack or mitigate specific consequences. A wide variety of application use cases will be considered so that audience members can align the material with familiar engineering applications. CIE is an engineering approach that integrates cyber resilience into the conception, design, build, and operation of any physical system that has digital connectivity, sensors, monitoring, or control. CIE offers the opportunity to use engineering to eliminate or mitigate avenues for cyber attack—starting from the earliest stage of design and continuing throughout the system’s lifecycle. Today, engineers and industrial control system (ICS) technicians build engineered systems with specific goals for safety, reliability, and functionality. While systems engineering includes considerable safety and failure mode analysis, cybersecurity risks are often not specifically addressed—particularly the risks of intentional cyber compromise, exploitation, and misuse. Cyber-Informed Engineering pairs well with traditional cyber defenses and offers an extra designed-in protection to eliminate the most catastrophic consequences which can be realized by an adversary should traditional cyber defenses fail.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

DRE: Designing for Resilience through Emulation

Threats to cyber- and cyber-physical systems have continued to increase over the past decade. Now more than ever, it is vital that cyber-physical system stakeholders have the tools to deeply understand their systems and the threats they face. High-fidelity modeling capabilities are powerful tools to support system understanding and decision-making, but they currently lack scientifically rigorous experimentation practices and infrastructures. The purpose of the project Designing for Resilience through Emulation (DRE) was to bring together past research and existing tools into a new pipeline to improve our ability to quantitatively evaluate future cyber scenarios. DRE offers new integrated capabilities for large dataset collection, noise studies, sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, and surrogate modeling using a cyber-physical system emulation environment. These new capabilities significantly improve our ability to establish the credibility of the answers derived from emulation environments, ultimately leading to better critical decision support.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Experiments for Securing Air Traffic Against Cyber-Physical System Attacks

This presentation describes experiments conducted with single board computers to investigate methods for creating trust for enabling the development of cyber-resilient air transportation systems. Methods included secure communication to prevent unauthorized access to data, consistency of data obtained via sensors and by processing, and built-in safeguards to prevent mission failure. The motivation for this work are the following. The future air transportation system needs to ensure availability, integrity, confidentiality and safety of operations. Safety of vehicles and operations is paramount for successful integration of Urban Air Mobility (UAM), Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), supersonic aircraft and launch vehicles with conventional aviation operations in the National Airspace System. Security is becoming critical because the sensors, networks and computers are far more vulnerable to bad actors than their mechanical or human predecessors. The goal therefore is to design and develop cyber-resilient systems that continue to function even in degraded states. The main findings are (1) off-the-shelf hardware can support development of cyber-resilient onboard flight computers and (2) trust in system design and implementation can be accomplished by integrating layers in depth (detail) and in breadth (scope).

cyber-resilient autonomy, trust, secure communicat↗
DOE OSTI2021

Design and evaluation of a cyber‐physical testbed for improving attack resilience of power systems

Abstract A power system is a complex cyber‐physical system whose security is critical to its function. A major challenge is to model, analyse and visualise the communication backbone of the power systems concerning cyber threats. To achieve this, the design and evaluation of a cyber‐physical power system (CPPS) testbed called Resilient Energy Systems Lab (RESLab) are presented to capture realistic cyber, physical, and protection system features. RESLab is architected to be a fundamental platform for studying and improving the resilience of complex CPPS to cyber threats. The cyber network is emulated using Common Open Research Emulator (CORE), which acts as a gateway for the physical and protection devices to communicate. The physical grid is simulated in the dynamic time frame using Power World Dynamic Studio (PWDS). The protection components are modelled with both PWDS and physical devices including the SEL Real‐Time Automation Controller (RTAC). Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3) is used to monitor and control the grid. Then, the design is exemplified and the tools are validated. This work presents four case studies on cyberattack and defence using RESLab, where we demonstrate false data and command injection using Man‐in‐the‐Middle and Denial of Service attacks and validate them on a large‐scale synthetic electric grid.

Sahu, Abhijeet↗
DOE OSTI2022

Assurance by Design for Cyber Physical Data-Driven Systems

Currently, Cyber Physical Data-Driven Systems (CPDDS) employ machine learning for the classification, data fusion, and control of our nation’s infrastructure, such as the power grid, transportation networks (e.g., fuel distribution, air traffic control), and DoD long-duration collaborative autonomous platforms including unmanned underwater, ground, surface, space, and aerial systems. Many CPDDSs are system-of-systems that should be designed to communicate over disadvantaged networks. It is important to assure that the CPDDSs are resilient against physical and cyber threats by design. Additionally, their design should tolerate misclassification errors resulting from natural and/or adversarial distribution shifts within their data driven components. The all-domain nature of the problem of assuring the design of CPDDSs requires a multi-disciplinary perspective as outlined in this chapter.

Chikkagoudar, Satish↗
DOE OSTI2024

Transforming Cyber Education thru Open to All Accessible Pathways

Boise State University’s (BSU) Cyber Operations and Resilience CORe program was intentionally designed so that any student, especially non-traditional and non-technical students, with an interest in cybersecurity could have an education and training pathway to enter the cyber workforce. The CORe curriculum focuses on teaching students how to design, apply, and improve cybersecurity through the interaction of people, processes, and technology. CORe is a stackable curriculum with elective credit hours and options for various academic and industry certificates and certifications that enable students to customize their unique career pathway. The CORe program guides students to think about the system being managed, the risks presented, and the dynamic intersection of system elements when considering how to incorporate resilience frameworks in achieving a resilient system. By developing systems thinking, the students gain an understanding of the interdependencies interacting with the operational system. Further, the CORe program encourages students to integrate cybersecurity knowledge with models and frameworks found in other academic disciplines through a unifying systems approach. CORe is designed around the realities of today’s broad cyber landscape: that breaches will occur in any system over time and proactive design of resilience into systems to detect, respond, and recover in a timely and orderly manner is critical. Students are taught to think holistically about cybersecurity focusing on all system elements. CORe is not a traditional cybersecurity degree. CORe is distinguished by the non-traditional engineering, computer science approach to cybersecurity education with the singular focus on infusing resilience operations and transdisciplinary systems thinking principles throughout the curriculum.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Introduction to the special section on learning and security for multi-agent systems

This report features six articles that provide an overview of the emerging research topics at the intersection learning, security, and multi-agent systems. Recent years have witnessed a surge in the number of works at their intersections, and they have appeared in system and control communities as well as many other communities in artificial intelligence, cyber–physical systems, and economics. The articles in this special section give accessible and comprehensive tutorials and surveys for a broad systems and control audience, covering topics including adversarial machine learning, multi-agent reinforcement learning, cyber resilience, resilient control systems, and game design. It is hopeful that this special section will spawn future interest and cross-disciplinary collaborations in this emerging transdisciplinary research area.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

ARCADE Technical Pathway and Industry Impact

The Advanced Reactor Cyber Analysis and Development Environment (ARCADE) simplifies the evaluation and assessment of robustness factor and cyber resilience that support secure-by-design for advanced reactor nuclear power plants. In this manner, ARCADE supports risk-informed performance based (RIPB) evaluations of cybersecurity through its integration of plant physics with high-fidelity emulations of control systems. This cross domain approach enables comprehensive analysis of control system sensitivities, cyber-attack scenarios, and their consequences. ARCADE has been custom developed to meet the demands identified in Tier 1 of the Tiered Cyber Analysis (TCA) as outlined in NRC Draft Regulation Guide (RG) 5.96, which provides a RIPB cybersecurity approach for new reactors.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

ResDesign: Resilient by Design Platform for CPS Assessment and Validation

ResDesign project has developed integrated capabilities to help cyber physical system modelers and analysts to evaluate vulnerabilities and resilience of such systems using co-simulation-based attack testbed, graph-based visualization and monitoring tool, and Bayesian optimization-based co-design capability. The project demonstrates a collection of attack scenarios and use cases in an integrated software environment.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Cyber Conservative Operations

In an era of increasingly sophisticated and pervasive cyber threats, robust cyber resilience strategies are more critical than ever. This paper introduces the concept of Cyber Conservative Operations, a proactive approach designed to assist critical infrastructure owners and operators in managing risk and maintaining resilience in the face of imminent, yet not occurring, cyber events. By leveraging the principles of Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) and the energy sector’s practice of conservative operations, Cyber Conservative Operations offer a framework for planning and executing coordinated active defense and resilience-oriented actions ahead of cyber events. This approach aims to minimize the consequences of digitally-enabled hazards and ensure swift recovery from anticipated cyber threats. Cyber Conservative Operations enhance the ability of owners and operators to execute pre-planned defense and resilience actions, thereby reducing the impact of digitally-enabled hazards. These operations are crucial for addressing impacts that cannot be precisely quantified or forecasted and for preparing organizations for rapid recovery from imminent digital threats. The paper begins with a discussion of conservative operations as applied to the bulk power system (BPS), a current mechanism allowing BPS entities to enact defensive operating plans to mitigate impending grid unreliability. Building on this model, we present a concept for implementing cyber conservative operations at asset owner facilities. The paper concludes with two case studies of cyber conservative operations drawn from high-profile cyber events, illustrating the practical application and benefits of this proactive approach.

42 - ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Resilient Communication Scheme for Distributed Decision of Interconnecting Networks of Microgrids

Networking of microgrids can provide the operational flexibility needed for the increasing number of DERs deployed at the distribution level and supporting end-use demand when there is loss of the bulk power system. But, networked microgrids are vulnerable to cyber-physical attacks and faults due to the complex interconnections. As such, it is necessary To design resilient control systems to support the operations of networked microgrids in responses to cyber-physical attacks and faults. This paper introduces a resilient communication scheme for interconnecting multiple microgrids to support critical demand, in which the interconnection decision can be made distributedly by each microgrid controller even in the presence of cyberattacks to some communication links or microgrid controllers. This scheme blends a randomized peer-to-peer communication network for exchanging information among controllers and resilient consensus algorithms for achieving reliable interconnection agreement. The network of 6 microgrids divided from a modified 123-node test distribution feeder is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed resilient communication scheme.

Vu, Thanh Long↗
DOE OSTI2023

Moving-horizon false data injection attack design against cyber–physical systems

Systematic attack design is essential to understanding the vulnerabilities of cyber–physical systems (CPSs), to better design for resiliency. In particular, false data injection attacks (FDIAs) are well-known and have been shown to be capable of bypassing bad data detection (BDD) while causing targeted biases in resulting state estimates. However, their effectiveness against moving horizon estimators (MHE) is not well understood. In fact, this paper shows that conventional FDIAs are generally ineffective against MHE. One of the main reasons is that the moving window renders the static FDIA recursively infeasible. Here, this paper proposes a new attack methodology, moving-horizon FDIA (MH-FDIA), by considering both the performance of historical attacks and the current system’s status. Theoretical guarantees for successful attack generation and recursive feasibility are given. Numerical simulations on the IEEE-14 bus system further validate the theoretical claims and show that the proposed MH-FDIA outperforms state-of-the-art counterparts in both stealthiness and effectiveness. In addition, an experiment on a path-tracking control system of an autonomous vehicle shows the feasibility of the MH-FDIA in real-world nonlinear systems.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cyber-Resilient Automatic Generation Control for Systems of AC Microgrids

In this paper we propose a co-design of the secondary frequency regulation in systems of AC microgrids and its cyber security solutions. We term the secondary frequency regulator a Micro-Automatic Generation Control (μ AGC) for highlighting its same functionality as the AGC in bulk power systems. We identify sensory challenges and cyber threats facing the μ AGC. To address the sensory challenges, we introduce a new microgrid model by exploiting the rank-one deficiency property of microgrid dynamics. This model is used to pose an optimal μ AGC control problem that is easily implemented, because it does not require fast frequency measurements. An end-to-end cyber security solution to the False Data Injection (FDI) attack detection and mitigation is developed for the proposed μ AGC. The front-end barrier of applying off-the-shelf algorithms for cyber attack detection is removed by introducing a data-driven modeling approach. Finally, we propose an observer-based corrective control for an islanded microgrid and a collaborative mitigation scheme in systems of AC microgrids. We demonstrate a collaborative role of systems of microgrids during cyber attacks. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed cyber-resilient μ AGC is tested in a system of two networked microgrids.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Engineering-In Cybersecurity

Cyber-Informed Engineering is a framework which allows engineers to build resiliency to the impacts of cyber attack into engineered systems starting in the early design phases. This article introduces the framework and provides a description of some of its principles and resources for learning more.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Cyber Informed Engineering (CIE) Principles Slide Presentation [Slides]

This document describes the concept and application of Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE), a methodology that integrates cyber threat awareness into all stages of the systems engineering life cycle. It delineates how CIE enhances the security posture of critical infrastructure systems, which are increasingly targeted by sophisticated cyber threats. The exposition proceeds to methodically walk through the twelve foundational principles of CIE, each serving as a strategic guidepost for embedding cybersecurity into the fabric of system design, development, operation, and maintenance. The principles highlight the importance of proactive and comprehensive security measures that span from risk assessment to continuous improvement, ensuring that systems are not only designed with security in mind but are also resilient in the face of evolving cyber threats.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Resilient Control of Networked Microgrids Using Vertical Federated Reinforcement Learning: Designs and Real-Time Test-Bed Validations

Improving system-level resiliency of networked microgrids against adversarial cyber-attacks is an important aspect in the current regime of increased inverter-based resources (IBRs). To achieve that, this paper contributes in designing a hierarchical control layer, in conjunction with the existing control layers, resilient to adversarial attack signals. Considering model complexities, unknown dynamical behaviors of IBRs, and privacy issues regarding data sharing in multi-party-owned microgrids, designing such a control layer is non-trivial. Here, to tackle these issues, a novel federated reinforcement learning (Fed-RL) method is proposed. To grasp the interconnected dynamics of networked microgrids, the paper develops Federated Soft Actor-Critic (FedSAC) algorithm following the vertical structure of implementing Fed-RL. Next, utilizing the OpenAI Gym interface, we built a custom set-up in GridLAB-D/HELICS co-simulation platform, named Resilient RL Co-simulation (ResRLCoSIM), to train the RL agents with IEEE 123-bus benchmark comprising 3 interconnected microgrids. Finally, the learned policies in the simulation are transferred to the real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test-bed developed using the high-fidelity Hypersim platform. Finally, experiments show that the simulator-trained RL controllers achieve desirable performance with the test-bed platform, validating the minimization of the sim-to-real gap.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Optimization-Based Resiliency Verification in Microgrids via Maximal Adversarial Set Characterization

Critical energy infrastructures are increasingly relying on advanced sensing and control technologies for efficient and optimal utilization of flexible energy resources. Algorithmic procedures are needed to ensure that such systems are designed to be resilient to a wide range of cyber-physical adversarial events. This paper provides a robust optimization framework to quantify the largest adversarial perturbation that a system can accommodate without violating pre-specified resiliency metrics. We formulate the maximal adversarial set characterization as a bi-level optimization problem which is solved via Lagrangian relaxations.We illustrate the proposed algorithm on an islanded microgrid example: a modified IEEE 123-node feeder with distributed energy resources. Simulations are carried out to characterize the tolerable adversarial perturbations for varying levels of available flexibility (energy reserves).

Nazir, Mohammad Nawaf↗