Security for Cyber-Physical Systems: Leveraging Cellular Networks and Fog Computing

The reach and scale of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) are expanding to many aspects of our everyday lives. Health, safety, transportation and education are a few areas where CPS are increasingly prevalent. There is a pressing need to secure CPS, both at the edge and at the network core. We present a hybrid framework for securing CPS that leverages the computational resources and coordination of Fog networks, and builds on cellular connectivity for low-power and resource constrained CPS devices. The routine support for cellular authentication, encryption, and integrity protection is enhanced with the addition of a cellular cloud controller to take over the management of the radio and core security contexts dedicated to CPS devices. Specialized cellular cloudlets liaison with core network components to implement localized and network-wide defense for denial-or-service, smart jamming, or unauthorized CPS tracking attacks. A comparison between our framework and recent cellular/fog solutions is provided, together with a feasibility analysis for operational framework deployment. We conclude with future research directions that we believe are pivotal to the proliferation of secure and scalable CPS.