Data Diodes in Support of a Power Grid Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are an integral part of the industrial infrastructure providing for the national good. While sharing basic constructs with Information Technology (IT) business systems, ICSs are technically, administratively, and functionally more complex and unique than business IT systems. Critical infrastructure protection focuses on protecting and maintaining a safe and reliable supply of electric power, oil, water, gasoline, chemicals, food, etc. Cyber vul-nerabilities are important if they can affect the safe, functional performance of these systems and processes. The majority of ICS exhibit vulnerable devices with unsecured physical access and/or subject to insider attack. In this whitepaper, we advocate trusted process control networks as a way to address the serious cyber security flaws which combines both white/black listing into a design philosophy that addresses information warfare scenarios, software process monitoring and an attack recognition and management architecture.