Our nation’s critical infrastructure—from the electric grid to water distribution systems—forms the backbone of our society. And while new technology advances at a staggering pace, much of this infrastructure—both digital and physical—continues to age. The gap between new technology and aging systems presents daunting challenges for system operators working to maintain safe operations of these resources.

At PNNL, researchers are examining ways to protect critical infrastructure in the face of rapid change and ever-increasing threats to cyber-physical systems. The research involves partnering with system owners and operators to share actionable threat, vulnerability, and mitigation information, and works with vendors to produce secure systems.

Increasing threats require novel solutions

Today’s control systems are under increasing scrutiny and threat, while critical infrastructures require continual functionality upgrades for newer software and hardware. These stressors create a pressing need for security solutions.

PNNL’s cyberNET and powerNET testbeds offer experimental alternatives to improve and enhance cyber-physical research. These testbeds, combined with PNNL’s underlying research infrastructure, provide access to models, datasets, methodologies, and expertise to help understand vulnerabilities and overcome threats to cyber-physical systems.

CyberNET is a unique PNNL capability that provides the ability to emulate enterprise network environments to enable controlled experimentation that wouldn’t be possible in operational environments. It offers a dynamic, easily configurable, and customizable space where researchers can build, test, and evaluate their solutions in an enterprise-like environment.

PowerNET is another PNNL tool designed to assist and accelerate research and development for industrial cyber-physical systems while providing a shared resource to reduce the up-front cost for equipment. The testbed offers a means for non-power system engineers to experiment with power system equipment.

These community-based resources aim to optimize the development of cyber-based systems, tools, and approaches to monitor, detect, delay, and respond to attacks on our nation’s critical infrastructure.