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Security and Safety of Internet-Connected Critical Infrastructure

Dr. Hokeun Kim

Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Arizona State University (ASU)

Abstract: Critical infrastructure, including advanced manufacturing (Industry 4.0), energy networks, healthcare, agriculture, and water management systems, has been increasingly connected to the Internet, especially since the recent pandemic. Critical infrastructure, when connected to the networks, allows remote operations, data processing on the cloud, and collaboration with other systems. However, the critical infrastructure’s network connectivity raises serious challenges. Recent cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, including US water systems and energy pipelines, have demonstrated the risk of such network-connected critical infrastructure. In addition, network latencies involved in the time-sensitive systems in critical infrastructure render the timely handling of critical tasks problematic. Moreover, these problems worsen when combined with the challenges in IoT and embedded system components in critical infrastructure, including resource constraints, heterogeneity, scalability, and operation in an open environment. This talk will introduce my multi-disciplinary research approaches to building safe, robust, effective, yet connected critical infrastructure deployed at scale. I will present an open-source platform for providing essential security processes for connected critical infrastructure and cyber-physical systems, along with its network architectures resilient against availability threats such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks or network failures. I will discuss my full-stack methodology for real-time and efficient critical infrastructure, from computer architecture to programming models. I will also introduce my ongoing and future research work to deal with further challenges in Internet-connected critical infrastructure.

Bio: Hokeun Kim is an assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI) at Arizona State University (ASU). Before joining ASU, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, and an assistant researcher in the Department of EECS at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. degree in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2017 with a focus on distributed cyber-physical systems and IoT security. After graduating from Berkeley, he spent four years in industry in Silicon Valley and continued research on the Internet and cloud security at Google before returning to academia in 2021. His research interests include cyber-physical systems, distributed systems, real-time systems, computer security, and computer architecture. He received the ACM/IEEE Best Paper Award and IEEE Micro Top Picks Honorable Mention for his research contributions to cyber-physical systems and computer architecture research.

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