Matthias Eckhart

SBA Research

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) may constitute an attractive attack target due to the increased networking of components that yields an expanded attack surface. If their physical control capabilities are compromised, safety implications may arise. Thus, it is vital that the CPSs being engineered are thoroughly tested and that adequate response measur...

As the threat landscape in the industrial domain continually advances, security-by-design is an ever-growing concern in the engineering of cyber-physical production systems (CPPSs). Often, quality aspects are not considered when securing CPPSs, which creates attack vectors that could lead to malicious activity affecting the products' quality. Since...

Industrial control systems (ICSs), such as production systems or critical infrastructures, are an attractive target for cybercriminals, since attacks against these systems may cause severe physical damages/material damages (PD/MD), resulting in business interruption (BI) and loss of profit (LOP). Besides financial loss, cyber-attacks against ICSs c...

Since cyber-physical systems are the backbone of smart cities and innovative industrial applications, their safe and secure operation is paramount. However, due to the steadily increasing aggressiveness, sophistication, and stealth of cyberattacks, new methods for threat detection and response are needed. The concept of digital twins opens up new a...

Systems integrators and vendors of industrial components need to establish a security-by-design approach, which includes the assessment and subsequent treatment of security risks. However, conducting security risk assessments along the engineering process is a costly and labor-intensive endeavor due to the complexity of the system(s) under consider...

Digital twins refer to virtual replicas of physical objects that, inter alia, enable to monitor, visualize, and predict states of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). These capabilities yield efficiency gains and quality improvements in manufacturing processes. In addition, the concept of digital twins can also be leveraged to advance the security of the...

Typical assumptions for research in quality and security assurance and improvement for small software-intensive systems may not hold for long-running technical systems, such as critical infrastructure or industrial production systems. Therefore, researchers in quality and security assurance and improvement can benefit from better understanding chal...

Providing Complex Cyber-Physical Systems (C-CPSs) more efficiently and faster is a goal that requires improvements in engineering process for producing high-quality, advanced engineering artifacts. Furthermore, information security must be a top priority when engineering C-CPSs as the engineering artifacts represent assets of high value.

Due to the gradual implementation of the Industry 4.0 vision, information technology is becoming increasingly important in industrial control systems (ICSs), such as production systems. Although the digital transformation of ICSs represents the foundation for resource-efficient and flexible industrial plants, this change increases the attack surfac...

The testing of automation applications has become a crucial pillar of every production systems engineering (PSE) project with the proliferation of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). In light of new attack vectors against CPSs, caused, inter alia, by increased connectivity, security aspects must be considered throughout the PSE process. In this context,...

This book examines the requirements, risks, and solutions to improve the security and quality of complex cyber-physical systems (C-CPS), such as production systems, power plants, and airplanes, in order to ascertain whether it is possible to protect engineering organizations against cyber threats and to ensure engineering project quality. The book...

In recent years, the concept of digital twins has received increasing attention. Virtual replicas of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) can be leveraged for monitoring, visualising and predicting states of CPSs, leading to new possibilities to enhance industrial operations. Yet, the benefit of this concept goes beyond typical Industry 4.0 use cases, suc...

Digital twins play a key role in realizing the vision of a smart factory. While this concept is often associated with maintenance, optimization, and simulation, digital twins can also be leveraged to enhance the security and safety of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). In particular, digital twins can run in parallel to a CPS, allowing to perform a sec...

Digital twins open up new possibilities in terms of monitoring, simulating, optimizing and predicting the state of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). Furthermore, we argue that a fully functional, virtual replica of a CPS can also play an important role in securing the system. In this work, we present a framework that allows users to create and execute...

A major problem for distributed Scrum teams is proper communication between the involved parties to ensure the quality of the final product. This is especially true for coordination issues such as sharing requirements, time schedules, to-dos and code artefacts. Hence, ScrumMasters complain frequently about software tools not suiting their daily nee...