Within a community, social relationships are paramount to profile individuals’ conduct. For instance, an individual within a social network might be compelled to embrace a behaviour that his/her companion has recently adopted. Such social attitude is labelled social influence, which assesses the extent by which an individual’s social neighbourhood adopt that individual’s behaviour. We suggest an original approach to influence maximization using a fuzzy-logic based model, which combines influence-weights associated with historical logs of the social network users, and their favourable location in the network. Our approach uses a two-phases process to maximise influence diffusion. First, we harness the complexity of the problem by partitioning the network into significantly-enriched community-structures, which we then use as modules to locate the most influential nodes across the entire network. These key users are determined relatively to a fuzzy-logic based technique that identifies the most influential users, out of which the seed-set candidates to diffuse a behaviour or an innovation are extracted following the allocated budget for the influence campaign. This way to deal with influence propagation in social networks, is different from previous models, which do not compare structural and behavioural attributes among members of the network. The performance results show the validity of the proposed partitioning-approach of a social network into communities, and its contribution to “activate” a higher number of nodes overall. Our experimental study involves both empirical and real contemporary social-networks, whereby a smaller seed set of key users, is shown to scale influence to the high-end compared to some renowned techniques, which employ a larger seed set of key users and yet they influence less nodes in the social network.

Criticalmanufacturingprocessesinsmartnetworkedsystems such as Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPSs) typically require guaranteed quality-of-service performances, which is supported by cyber- security management. Currently, most existing vulnerability-assessment techniques mostly rely on only the security department due to limited communication between di↵erent working groups. This poses a limitation to the security management of CPPSs, as malicious operations may use new exploits that occur between successive analysis milestones or across departmental managerial boundaries. Thus, it is important to study and analyse CPPS networks’ security, in terms of vulnerability analysis that accounts for humans in the production process loop, to prevent potential threats to infiltrate through cross-layer gaps and to reduce the magnitude of their impact. We propose a semantic framework that supports the col- laboration between di↵erent actors in the production process, to improve situation awareness for cyberthreats prevention. Stakeholders with dif- ferent expertise are contributing to vulnerability assessment, which can be further combined with attack-scenario analysis to provide more prac- tical analysis. In doing so, we show through a case study evaluation how our proposed framework leverages crucial relationships between vulner- abilities, threats and attacks, in order to narrow further the risk-window induced by discoverable vulnerabilities.

Recent advances in data analytics prompt dynamic datadriven vulnerability assessments whereby data contained from vulnerabilityalert repositories as well as from Cyber-physical System (CPS) layer networks and standardised enumerations. Yet, current vulnerability assessment processes are mostly conducted manually. However, the huge volume of scanned data requires substantial information processing and analytical reasoning, which could not be satisfied considering the imprecision of manual vulnerability analysis. In this paper, we propose to employ a cross-linked and correlated database to collect, extract, filter and visualise vulnerability data across multiple existing repositories, whereby CPS vulnerability information is inferred. Based on our locally-updated database, we provide an in-depth case study on gathered CPS vulnerability data, to explore the trends of CPS vulnerability. In doing so, we aim to support a higher level of automation in vulnerability awareness and back risk-analysis exercises in critical infrastructures (CIs) protection.

Despite the growing interest in the Internet-of-Things, many organizations remain reluctant to integrating things into their business processes. Different reasons justify this reluctance including things’ limited capabilities to act upon the cyber-physical surrounding in which they operate. To address this specific limitation, this paper examines thing empowerment with cognitive capabilities that would make them for instance, selective of the next business processes in which they would participate. The selection is based on things’ restrictions like limitedness and goals to achieve like improved reputation. For demonstration purposes, water leaks are used as a case study. A BPEL-based business process driving the fixing of water leaks is implemented involving different cognitive things like moisture sensor.

Power grids form the central critical infrastructure in all developed economies. Disruptions of power supply can cause major effects on the economy and the livelihood of citizens. At the same time, power grids are being targeted by sophisticated cyber attacks. To counter these threats, we propose a domain-specific language and a repository to represent power grids and related IT components that control the power grid. We apply our tool to a standard example used in the literature to assess its expressiveness.

Smart grid employs Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and network connectivity to optimize efficiency and deliver new functionalities. This evolution is associated with an increased risk for cybersecurity threats that may hamper smart grid operations. Power utility providers need tools for assessing risk of prevailing cyberthreats over ICT infrastructures. The need for frameworks to guide the development of these tools is essential to define and reveal vulnerability analysis indicators. We propose a data-driven approach for designing testbeds to allow the simulation of cyberattacks in order to evaluate the vulnerability and the impact of cyber threat attacks. The proposed framework uses data reported from multiple smart grid components at different smart grid architecture layers, including physical, control, and cyber layers. The multi-agent based framework proposed in this paper would analyze the conglomeration of these data reports to assert malicious attacks.

This paper discusses the blend of cognitive computing with the Internet-of-Things that should result into developing cognitive things. Today’s things are confined into a data-supplier role, which deprives them from being the technology of choice for smart applications development. Cognitive computing is about reasoning, learning, explaining, acting, etc. In this paper, cognitive things’ features include functional and non-functional restrictions along with a 3 stage operation cycle that takes into account these restrictions during reasoning, adaptation, and learning. Some implementation details about cognitive things are included in this paper based on a water pipe case-study.

This document reports a technical description of ELVIRA project results obtained as part of Work-package 2.1 entitled “Complex Dependencies Analysis”. In this technical report, we review attempts in recent researches where connections are regarded as influencing factors to  IT systems monitoring critical infrastructure, based on which potential dependencies and resulting disturbances are identified and categorized. Each kind of dependence has been discussed based on our own entity based model. Among those dependencies, logical and functional connections have been analysed with more details on modelling and simulation techniques.

Smart grid employs ICT infrastructure and network connectivity to optimize efficiency and deliver new functionalities. This evolu- tion is associated with an increased risk for cybersecurity threats that may hamper smart grid operations. Power utility providers need tools for assessing risk of prevailing cyberthreats over ICT infrastructures. The need for frameworks to guide the develop- ment of these tools is essential to define and reveal vulnerability analysis indicators. We propose a data-driven approach for design- ing testbeds to evaluate the vulnerability of cyberphysical systems against cyberthreats. The proposed framework uses data reported from multiple components of cyberphysical system architecture layers, including physical, control, and cyber layers. At the phys- ical layer, we consider component inventory and related physi- cal flows. At the control level, we consider control data, such as SCADA data flows in industrial and critical infrastructure control systems. Finally, at the cyber layer level, we consider existing secu- rity and monitoring data from cyber-incident event management tools, which are increasingly embedded into the control fabrics of cyberphysical systems.

Smart grid adopts ICT to enhance power-delivery management. However, these advanced technologies also introduce an increasing amount of cyber threats. Cyber threats occur because of vulnerabilities throughout smart-grid layers. Each layer is distinguished by typical data flows. For example, power-data stream flows along the physical layer; command data are pushed to and pulled from sensor-control devices, such as RTUs and PLCs. Vulnerabilities expose these data flows to cyber threat via communication networks, such as local control network, vendor network, corporate network and the wider internet. Thus, these data could be used to analyse vulnerabilities against cyber threats. After data collection, data analysis and modelling techniques would be used for vulnerability assessment.