Security and Resilience of Cyber-physical Systems: Lessons, Challenges and Opportunities
WenZhan Song, Ph.D., University of Georgia
Moderator: Prashanth Rajivan, University of Washington

In cyber-physical systems (CPSs), the main challenges of security and resilience include: (1) Larger attack surface, e.g., suffering from attack vectors from not only the cyber end, but also the physical end and the human end; the number of devices is huge and more accessible to hackers. (2) More diverse attack goals/targets, e.g., attacking safety, real-time, human-in-the-loop, physical-world privacy, etc. (3) Interdependency of cyber and physical space, e.g., some attacks may be unnoticeable in cyber or physical space alone, and data fusion and interdependent analysis are necessary. (4) Resilience and immunization capability is a requirement, not an option. The emerging extensive use of AI in safety-critical CPSs such as autonomous driving systems further exacerbates such security challenges due to the lack of interpretability and formal specifications of the CPS AI components. Such substantial research gaps at CPS, AI, and security fronts call for fundamentally new security design strategies, theories, and principles. Zero-trust solutions need to be created in both IT and OT space without sacrificing efficiency and scalability. 

Dr. WenZhan Song is Georgia Power Mickey A. Brown Professor in Computer Engineering and Founding Director of the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (CCPS) at the University of Georgia. He is a renowned expert on IoT/CPS networking, data analytics and security and has made significant impacts in health, energy and environment CPS. His research was featured in MIT Technology Review, Network World, Scientific American, New Scientist, National Geographic, etc. His research spans wireless networking, smart sensing and cyber-physical security areas and has a strong tracking record on leading large multidisciplinary research projects from government agencies (NSF, NASA, DOE, DOD, NIH, USDA) and industry.  Dr. Song has received numerous awards from his university and professional society, such as NSF CAREER Award, Outstanding Research Contribution Award, Chancellor Research Excellence Award, Mark Weiser Best Paper Award. He serves as editor, chair or TPC member in premium IEEE conferences (such as IEEE PERCOM, IEEE INFOCOM) and journals (such as IEEE Internet of Things, ACM Transaction on Sensor Networks). Dr. Song holds the faculty courtesy appointment in UGA computer science and statistics department. He received a PhD in computer science from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2005.