Critical Infrastructures Protection

[I don’t actively work on this topic at the moment]

Topic overview

Since the American commission on critical infrastructures protection in 1997, large infrastructures such as telecommunication, transportation, electrical or water supply networks have received much attention from the political and research communities. The recent over-protective ambiance in western countries increased the efforts put into this theme.

These networks may generally be considered as large and complex systems, as they span over the entire planet, composed of several smaller networks, interconnected and interdependent.

Several research initiatives have been granted by different governmental agencies in order to study the safety and the security of these multi-operated global networks and to develop solutions to prevent severe scenarios from happening.

At first sight, this research field may appear tainted with a lot of paranoid thinking. However, the characterization of the capacity of these infrastructures to resist to failures and attacks is still imprecise. The domain requires a great modeling effect to identify the true problems that may impact these infrastructures and that may be solved by computer science and communication techniques.

Research directions

Through different collaborations, we are currently interested into two main problems:

  • The interdependencies between infrastructures is an important factor to consider, as a failure in one network may impact its more or less direct neighbors, potentially spanning over different infrastructure types. The classical common sense example of such cross-domain interdependencies is the relationship between telecommunication and electrical networks. We believe that, as soon as different and potentially concurrent operators are involved in a common task, there may exist dependencies that may not be intrinsic but that may be due to the lack of vision one may have over the black box represented by a single network.
  • The interaction between different objectives also appears as a potential cause of problems. We are currently interested in modeling the interactions between safety and security objectives. If these two objectives should not, in theory, be antagonistic, they generally fall under the responsibility of different services and their implementation may include some contradictory or redundant procedures.

Ph.D Students

  • Alpha Diallo, on the topic of critical infrastructures interdependencies.
  • Ludovic Piètre-Cambacédès, on the subject of interactions between safety and security.

Related contractual research projects

  • The SINARI ANR Project deals with interdependencies between electrical and telecommunication networks.
  • The IRRIIS European Integrated Project (ICT-FP6) (2006 – 2009) addressed interdependencies problems between telecommunication and electrical networks.

Publications

2013

McDonald, John; Decroix, Hélène; Caire, Raphaël; Sanchez, Jose; Chollet, Stéphanie; Oualha, Nouha; Puccetti, Armand; Hecker, Artur; Chaudet, Claude; Piat, Henri; Georges, Daniel; Planchon, Frédéric

The SINARI project: Security analysis and risk assessment applied to the electrical distribution network Proceedings Article

In: 22nd International Conference and Exhibition on Electricity Distribution (CIRED 2013), Stockholm, Sweden, 2013.

Links | BibTeX

Hecker, Artur; Benchaïb, Yacine; Chaudet, Claude

ARMATURE: a Structurally Adaptive Connectivity Manager for Critical Communication Services Preservation Proceedings Article

In: IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control (IFAC MIM '2013), St Petersbug, Russia, 2013.

Links | BibTeX

2012

Piètre-Cambacédès, Ludovic; Buissou, Marc; Chaudet, Claude

Des relations entre sûreté et sécurité Proceedings Article

In: Congrès Lambda Mu 18, Tours, France, 2012.

BibTeX

2010

Piètre-Cambacédès, Ludovic; Chaudet, Claude

The SEMA referential framework: Avoiding ambiguities in the terms "security" and "safety" Journal Article

In: International Journal of Critical Infrastructures Protection, vol. 3, no. 2, 2010.

Links | BibTeX

Piètre-Cambacédès, Ludovic; Chaudet, Claude

The SEMA referential framework: Avoiding equivocations on security and safety issues Proceedings Article

In: Fourth Annual IFIP Working Group 11.10 International Conference on Critical Infrastructure Protection, Washington, DC, USA, 2010.

BibTeX

2009

Diallo, Alpha Amadou; Chaudet, Claude

An Alternate Topology Generator for Joint Study of Power Grids and Communication Networks Proceedings Article

In: 4th International Workshop on Critical Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS 2009), Bonn, Germany, 2009.

Links | BibTeX

Piètre-Cambacédès, Ludovic; Chaudet, Claude

Disentangling the relations between safety and security Proceedings Article

In: The 9th WSEAS International Conference on Applied Informatics and Communications (AIC'09), Moscow, Russia, 2009.

BibTeX

Delamare, Simon; DIallo, Alpha Amadou; Chaudet, Claude

High-level modeling of critical infrastructures interdependencies Journal Article

In: International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, vol. 5, no. 1/2, pp. 100-119, 2009.

Links | BibTeX

2007

Delamare, Simon; DIallo, Alpha Amadou; Chaudet, Claude

High-level modeling of critical infrastructures interdependencies Proceedings Article

In: Critical Infrastructures as Complex Systems conference, co-located with European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS 2007), Dresden, Germany, 2007.

BibTeX