Safety, security, and risk management in critical industrial sectors

The industries that are interconnected and serve the fundamental needs of society are critical. We live in a world where the threat to critical industries is increasing day by day. Many sophisticated cyber warfare practices and seemingly limitless digital process capacity that can facilitate intrusion have evolved recently. The loss of availability or halt in the functionality of critical industrial sectors may cause severe impacts on the wellbeing of society. Thus, it is important to consider safety, security, and risk management aspects in the critical infrastructure. The threats to critical industrial sectors come from both the physical and virtual worlds. Since nations and societies depend on the integrity and resiliency of critical industrial sectors, continuous research and identifying methods to improve the security measures in critical industrial sectors is much needed.

The surveillance systems serve as the key aspect of security systems in any facet or industry. The surveillance systems can provide an accurate picture that can identify the threat in the first place. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and Distributed Control Systems (DCS) are major technological systems used by critical industries. These systems essentially collect and analyze real-time data. These systems are responsible for every operation of the critical industries. Because these systems play such a key role in such critical industrial operations, a flaw that goes unchecked could lead to disastrous real-world implications. There is a need for state of the art concepts that can secure distributed control systems (DCS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Intelligent cyber-surveillance systems that can surreptitiously monitor, exploit and analyze data is much needed to tackle cyber threats. It is important to analyze the effectiveness of innovative technologies such as AI, Deep learning, and more. This analysis of innovative technologies can pave the way for futuristic methods that can facilitate safety, security and risk management in critical industrial sectors. There is a need to identify methods that can leverage innovative computing concepts for inducing real-time safety. Innovative methods to back up the data and developing multi-factor authentication is critical to ensure safety. Since cyber warfare has become very sophisticated, a comprehensive roadmap that can provide cyber safety and develop a cyber incident response plan is needed.

This special issue aims to examine the potential cyber threats to critical industries to be useful to create an action plan for cyber security, safety and risk management in critical industrial sectors. We expect submissions for the following research theme:

Risk analysis methods for critical industries
Protection of industrial installations and industrial control systems
Resilience and risk preparedness in critical industrial sector
Role of AI in risk management in critical industrial sector
Novel architectures to ensure security of critical industries
Framework for security protocol in critical industrial sector
Decision support systems for mitigating threats in critical industrial sectors
Recent trends in risk management in critical industries
Comprehensive roadmap for ensuring security in critical industries
Technologies influencing safety, security and risk management in critical industrial sector