Diversity for security: case assessment for FPGA-based safety-critical systems

Abstract

Industrial safety critical instrumentation and control systems (I&Cs) are facing more with information (in general and cyber, in particular) security threats and attacks. The application of programmable logic, first of all, field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) in critical systems causes specific safety deficits. Security assessment techniques for such systems are based on heuristic knowledges and the expert judgment. Main challenge is how to take into account features of FPGA technology for safety critical I&Cs including systems in which are applied diversity approach to minimize risks of common cause failure. Such systems are called multi-version (MV) systems. The goal of the paper is in description of the technique and tool for case-based security assessment of MV FPGA-based I&Cs.