Using traditional (probabilistic) methods to analyse the safety risks of severe accidents in non-digital systems, structures, and components at nuclear power plants or the defence sector is a ...well-established practice. However, when assessing the cyber risks associated with digital assets, this field is still in its early stages and lacks proven techniques. At this point, the threat landscape in the digital palatinate is constantly changing, and digital assets can fail unexpectedly. As nuclear, defence and security sectors incorporate digital instrumentation and control systems, developing effective and efficient techniques for analysing cyber risks becomes more crucial. These techniques are needed to make informed decisions about managing risks, whether by redesigning systems to eliminate or implementing security measures to mitigate them. To gain insight into the current state of cyber risk analysis, we analysed several publications spanning several application domains and the UK government reports. Our survey framework evaluated each technique based on its scope, scalability, feasibility, complexity, and capability. We also considered the specific challenges faced by the nuclear, defence and other security industries and assessed how well these cyber risk analysis techniques could be applied. Our analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques within the industry, and we identify gaps in the current approaches. Furthermore, we search into the difficulties and potential paths for future research in advancing the science of cyber risk analysis. This discussion encompasses the existing nuclear and defence reactor technologies and the potential directions for new advanced reactors.
The objective of this study was to develop a non-virulent simulant to replace several virulent organisms during the development of detection and identification methods for biological threat agents. ...We identified and selected specific genes to detect Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Rickettsia sp., Coxiella burnetii, Brucella sp., enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli O157:H7, Bacillus anthracis, and variola (smallpox) virus. We then designed and engineered a non-infectious simulant that included the nucleic-acid signature of each microorganism in a single chimerical molecule. Here, we reported an approach that by direct (de novo) chemical synthesis permitted the production of a single chimerical construct 2,040bp long that included the nucleic-acid signature of the bacterial and viral biological threat agents listed above without requiring access to these agents. Sequences corresponding to each one of the biological agents in the synthetic simulant were amplified by PCR, resulting in amplicons of the expected length, of similar intensity, and without any detectable unspecific products. The novel simulant described here could reduce the need for infectious agents in the development of detection and diagnostic methods and should also be useful as a non-virulent positive control in nucleic-acid-based tests against biological threat agents.
Detecting biological threat aerosol is difficult in that a small cloud lasting only a few seconds at a point location may contain sufficient material to infect large numbers of exposed individuals. ...Clinical analytical methods require relative large amounts of the sample in liquid form to facilitate positive measurements. Biological agents may be fragile because of their lipid membranes that can be susceptible to harsh sample collection treatment. Damaged organisms may render subsequent analyses to be invalid. Virtual impaction (VI) sample collectors have been theorized to provide usable concentration rates yet are sufficiently gentle with the aerosol particles to preserve cellular viability. This review will discuss different implementations of VI technology and examine their merits. Outstanding issues will be outlined to aid future experimentation.
The simulation of a modern railway system on the cyber range will investigate the supple behavior of cyber-attacks in a modern digital railway system. The contemporary digital railway simulation ...architecture will focus on the railway's signaling system and the control command system, which is a classic SCADA system. With the introduction of IoT technology to railway systems, they have become vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The simulation is conducted on the cyber range server by simulating STCS. The cyber threats will be analyzed through penetration testing using Kali Linux on the simulated STCS on the cyber range. We analyze the impact of the threat agent groups, especially denial of service (DoS) and quay chain attacks that mainly target the STCS. The DoS attack generates the congestion of packets in the railway system network and will compromise the SCADA components in the STCS. The quay chain attack compromises the SCADA component, resulting in a delay in the signal system of STCS. The attack tree analysis helps us to understand the behavior of threat agents on STCS. Based on the research, we identified some mitigation techniques to reduce the cyber-attacks impact on the modern digital railway system.
The threat assessment model and methodology are developed based on the study and analysis of threat agents found in the real-time informational network. These models and methodology are dynamic ...system frameworks designed to understand the assets of an organization and threats to the business. The key findings and conclusion of threat assessment rely on the information extracted from the identified threat agents, using several attributes like threat profiling, critical threat intelligence (CTI), and determining the impact based on motivation, opportunity, and capability of the threat an organization/business. However, threat models and methodology enable us to perform a proactive cybersecurity threats assessment in an informational environment. The further investigation of the threat agent's incident also reveals different approaches followed by several existing models and methodologies. This research will present the existing risk assessment model's weaknesses and limitations and show how the current models and methodology fail to cover a comprehensive pattern analysis of captured packets from the network. In reflecting on this work, we use hypothetical and real-world examples of threat agents and analyze the threat agent's attributes (motivation, capability, and opportunity) that are not covering in standard threat agent taxonomies.
The objective of the proposed research is to assess the exposure of subway riders and workers to threat agents introduced in the subway environment. This article presents the study plan, ...considerations, and expected outcomes of a novel approach to study this issue. A modular scale model of a subway station has been erected from Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York design specifications. This model will be used in a series of experiments to analyze airflow and dispersion patterns in the wake of a moving train and in an empty tunnel. Particle image velocimetry will be used to measure transient velocity profiles and concentration profiles.
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