Dear Colleagues,

Security, and particularly cyber-physical-social security, has gained momentum worldwide due to the emergence of high-profile cyberattacks with catastrophic consequences on physical assets and social systems. It is crucial to secure cyber-physical-social systems that are present at the core of society. As smart systems, they include both physical and computational components, which seamlessly integrate and closely interact in order to sense the constantly changing states of the real world. The power grid, the transport network, and information and communication systems are some examples of these systems. They are the society’s “Critical Infrastructures”, which are national assets, and essential to maintaining vital societal functions.

Damage or destruction of critical infrastructures by natural disasters, terrorism, and criminal activity may have negative consequences for the security of a nation and the wellbeing of its citizens. Protecting them is essential, as well as protecting the system of system relationships that a failing system has, as these could render a minor system critical under certain circumstances. These facts unveil the significant importance of increasing the capacity of the critical infrastructures to resist in case of a threat and recover quickly from damages.

Due to the latest advancements, such as sophisticated threat matrices, automation related to the fourth industrial revolution, uncertainty about threat patterns, big data management, the complexity of social functions and structures and the related consequences for privacy and protection of personal data, upcoming attacks and threats have made these critical infrastructures highly insecure. As these infrastructures are heavily interconnected, this, as a result, makes the disruption more sophisticated and targeted. The potential damage caused by human errors in control systems is no less dangerous and could cause the decay of the system.

The scenario is even more complicated by the diverse state of digitalization of critical infrastructures or their ancillary services, and by the presence of diverse stakeholders and actors in their security and safety management. Recent events have demonstrated the increase of combined physical and cyberattacks due to their interdependencies [1]. Disruptions in the operation of a transport asset may result from many kinds of physical attacks and/or cyberattacks on installations and their interconnected systems. In addition, such attacks can easily be triggered with minimum human involvement from remote locations, thus making infrastructures more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Conversely, the involvement of people and ‘soft targets’ could be a fundamental resource in the prevention, detection, reaction, and mitigation phases.

The overall scenario is in continuous evolution, and novel emergent approaches are required to cope with the security and protection from physical and cyber threats and the correlated events.

This Special Issue will collect highly relevant and outstanding research articles that can provide solutions for securing and protecting critical infrastructures. This Special Issue will benefit the research domain and the industry as a result. The Authors are particularly encouraged to submit original articles, literature reviews, and research/discussion notes on critical infrastructures protection, and critical infrastructure cyber-physical-social resilience. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Cyber-physical threats management;
• Cyber-physical-social systems management;
• Big data analytics for smart grids security;
• Security analytics for ICS/SCADA systems;
• New attack patterns and behavior analysis for critical infrastructure security;
• Detection and analysis for malware;
• In-stream data analytics for network monitoring;
• Big data analysis for critical Infrastructures data storage;
• CPS data stream visualization and analysis;
• Collaborative intrusion detection and multiple agents monitoring for critical infrastructure security;
• Critical-infrastructure-related big data policies and standards;
• Log analytics for critical infrastructures;
• Vulnerability analysis for critical infrastructures;
• Privacy protection for critical infrastructures;
• Security analysis of intrusion prevention systems for critical infrastructures;
• Critical infrastructure network forensics;
• Intrusion detection systems analytics;
• Security modeling and threat of critical infrastructures;
• Cybersecurity multistream analysis for critical infrastructure correlations;
• Security data collection and protection technologies;
• Trustworthy data process, aggregation, and analytics for critical infrastructure security
• Applications of cyber-physical-social system approaches in real cases

[1] https://www.csoonline.com/article/3125476/security/the-future-of-security-a-combination-of-cyber-and-physical-defense.html

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