Problem/Research Statement

Recent attacks on ICS have demonstrated how vulnerable manufacturing facilities and plants are to attacks and have emphasized how much we depend on these facilities and how devastating the outcome/aftermath of an attack on these systems would be. This issue is exacerbated by the persistence of old protocols and technologies at most facilities. What needs to be improved is reliable and accurate information on what ICS can and cannot defend against emerging threats.

Purpose Statement

This capstone project aims to leverage knowledge learned about security testing in the cybersecurity realm and apply it in another context to the physical world. We aim to determine how best to protect manufacturers' ICS systems from harm and attack to prevent various disasters. This capstone will allow the researcher to test different ICS systems to determine which system performs and protects the best and provide this information to facilitate ICS systems.