Security framework in digital twins for cloud-based industrial control systems: intrusion detection and mitigation

With the help of modern technologies and advances in communication systems, the functionality of Industrial control systems (ICS) has been enhanced leading toward to have more efficient and smarter ICS. However, this makes these systems more and more connected and part of a networked system. This can provide an entry point for attackers to infiltrate the system and cause damage with potentially catastrophic consequences. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a digital twin-based security framework for ICS that consists of two parts: attack detection and attack mitigation. In this framework we deploy an intrusion detection system in digital domain that can detect attacks in a timely manner. Then, using our mitigation method, we keep the system stable with acceptable performance during the attack. Additionally, we implement our framework on a real testbed and evaluate its capability by subjecting it to a set of attacks.