Temporal network reliability in perturbed scenarios: Application to a SCADA system

The role of network reliability in the analysis of Critical Infrastructures (CI) is investigated showing that the traditional approach must be extended in two directions: to include the packet propagation time along the links for real time analysis, and to include networks in which many sources may be variously connected to many sinks. A case study of a SCADA system controlling a power grid, originated from the EU Project MICIE (MICIE - Tool for systemic risk analysis and secure mediation of data exchanged across linked CI information infrastructures) [6], is examined in details, by considering the system in normal operation and when perturbed by malicious attacks. The paper describes an analytical model that can provide timely and accurate information about the reliability status of the system, and that can rapidly be adapted to the changing configurations of the interacting networks. The aim of this work is to explore the feasibility of providing the human operators with a reliability monitor that assists them in checking the status of the system.