Classification and Comparison of Critical Infrastructure Protection Tools

Modeling and analysis of critical infrastructure interdependencies is a research area that has attracted considerable interest. Interdependency and risk analyses can be computationally intensive, but can also yield useful results that enhance risk assessments and offer risk mitigation alternatives. Unfortunately, many tools and methodologies are left unsupported and are forgotten soon after the projects that developed them terminate.This chapter attempts to identify and classify many existing tools and frameworks to create a common baseline for threat identification and risk assessment. It also compares their attributes and technologies in creating a taxonomy. Conceptual and qualitative studies about infrastructure interdependencies along with modeling and simulation approaches are examined. The comparison is based on two aspects: the purpose that each tool serves and its technical modeling approach. This work attempts to aid the industrial control system security community by acting as a single point of reference and drawing attention to possible modeling combinations to enable researchers to identify and construct complex combined solutions that yield better results. The analysis suggests that future research should address risk mitigation through qualitative rather than quantitative analyses. The contributions can be maximized by developing holistic meta-tools or focusing entirely on specific problems.