A Host-Based Security Assessment Architecture for Industrial Control Systems

Computerized control systems perform vital functions across many critical infrastructures throughout the nation. These systems can be vulnerable to a variety of attacks leading to devastating consequences like loss of production, interruption in distribution of public utilities and most importantly endangering public safety. This calls for an approach to halt attacks in their tracks before being able to do any harm to these systems. Vulnerability assessment performed on these systems can identify and assess potential vulnerabilities in a control system network, before they are exploited by malicious intruders. An effective vulnerability assessment architecture should assimilate security knowledge from multiple sources to uncover all the vulnerabilities present on a host.