Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Internet Things
Sec. Security, Privacy and Authentication
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/friot.2024.1436023
This article is part of the Research Topic Socio-technical Cybersecurity and Resilience in the Internet of Things View all 8 articles

Exploiting User-Centred Design to Secure Industrial Control Systems

Provisionally accepted
Matthew Nunes Matthew Nunes 1*Hakan Kayan Hakan Kayan 1Pete Burnap Pete Burnap 1*Charith Perera Charith Perera 1Jason Dykes Jason Dykes 2*
  • 1 Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
  • 2 City University of London, London, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Due to an increase in the number of attacks on Industrial Control Systems (ICS), the security of these systems is now of paramount concern. Many solutions have been proposed to defend such systems, particularly those adopting Machine Learning (ML). The goal of this study is to increase the likelihood of the solution being deployed into a real environment. As part of that, multiple interviews were held with industry experts who have been embedded within ICS cyber-security for decades. The findings revealed that the current security solutions for ICS lack the sophistication required to be adopted due to flawed assumptions made about the end-user. Therefore, this work provides personas of each end-user group within ICS that need to be taken into consideration when designing a security solution. In addition, wireframes are provided showing what a desired solution could look like. By sharing these findings, it is hoped to inform those working within this space and increase the likelihood of their solutions being adopted within a real environment. Furthermore, the expert panel requested a number of features that do not currently exist within the ICS cyber-security space, therefore, by sharing these with the wider community, it is hoped that the field will move closer towards providing solutions containing these features.

    Keywords: visualisation, user-centred design, ICS, IDS, Cyber-security

    Received: 21 May 2024; Accepted: 27 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Nunes, Kayan, Burnap, Perera and Dykes. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Matthew Nunes, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
    Pete Burnap, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
    Jason Dykes, City University of London, London, EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.