Digital Twins for Cyber-Physical Systems Security: State of the Art and Outlook

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 smart factory. More precisely, this concept can be applied as early as in the design phase by providing engineers the means to spot security flaws in the specification of the CPS. Security testing or intrusion detection are other security-enhancing technical use cases of digital twins that can be realized in systems engineering or during plant operation. In this chapter, we will discuss how digital twins can accompany their physical counterparts throughout the entire lifecycle and thereby strengthen the security of CPSs. The findings of this chapter indicate that the concept of digital twins will open up new paths to secure CPSs. However, efficiently creating, maintaining, and running digital twins still represents a major research challenge, as the overhead costs hinder the adoption of this concept. We believe that these insights are valuable to shape future research in this emerging research area at the intersection of digital twins and information security.