Frank J. Furrer - Safety and Security of Cyber-Physical Systems: Engineering dependable Software using Principle-based Development

Responsible Editor: Leonardo Milla

This Springer Vieweg imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature.

The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany

This book is about cyber-physical systems. A Google search for this term results in 405000000 hits in 0.64 seconds (25.01.2022). Together with the strongly linked use of the term and the concept with other related popular terms such as Industry 4.0 and (IoT) Internet of Things, this fact clearly shows the importance of cyber-physical systems in the present and the upcoming world!

The NIST characterization: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) comprise interacting digital, analog, physical, and human components engineered for function through integrated physics and logic. These systems will provide the foundation of our critical infrastructure, form the basis of emerging and future smart services, and improve our quality of life in many areas. Cyber-physical systems will bring advances in personalized health care, emergency response, traffic flow management, and many more ( https://www.nist.gov/el/cyber-physical-systems , [Last accessed: 16.06.2021]).

Suffices by itself to underline the importance of the field.

This characterization does not explicitly mention the correct operation and continuous availability of cyber-physical systems and is apparently taken for granted. However, we need and somehow expect such fundamental properties to become a commodity for the functioning of our modern CPS-based society.

Unfortunately, reaching this goal will require a lot of effort, research, and practice. In fact, all existing cyber-physical systems are and will ever be under the continuous influence of cyber-attacks, faults, and failures hitting their software or underlying hardware, possibly causing unavailability or improper behavior of their operating environment, human errors, or being impacted by malicious activities.

This book precisely addresses those challenges that are at the basis of proper functioning of cyber-physical systems and the infrastructures they compose: It deals with the focused and fundamental issue of engineering principles for safety and security.

The book is divided into two main parts, each providing significant contributions toward managing safety and security.

The first addresses all the relevant concepts and explains their relations and links to the reader. Here the book offers many definitions and provides the conceptual framework for cyber-physical systems. All the facets of CPSs and the possible safety and security implications are linked to the fundamental notion of risk. Finally, all the impairments to proper functioning at all possible locations are explored and exemplified so that the reader can have a comprehensive view of the complexity that needs to be managed appropriately.

While the first part provides and structures the essential knowledge on safety, security, and risk, the second part elaborates on proper responses regarding a few paramount questions that must be asked: 1) How are good safety and security defined? 2) How is good safety and security formalized? 3) How is good safety and security taught? 4) How is good safety and security enforced?

This book provides enlightening solutions by defining, formalizing, strictly applying, and enforcing safety and security principles. In fact, good safety and security principles provide reliable knowledge for the successful architecting of trustworthy cyber-physical systems.

The second part of the book introduces and then details the concept of principle-based engineering to explain and justify a number of safety and security principles. This approach to architecting safe and secure systems is complemented and enriched by many instructive examples and practical observations, which add value to the book and allow the message to arrive clearly and sound.

I also want to remark the high value of the book as an instrument for teaching and education. Given its style and the richness of the examples made, the book can be used both as a textbook for graduate students but also as a guideline for the practitioner and the engineer as a help for a correct application of the safety and security principles when architecting and implementing cyber-physical systems of any of the types and variations described in the book.

The reader will appreciate how the book grew out of the long-running activities of the author and shows the admirable maturity he has achieved, both in the vastity of the material included and the presentation style. All this makes the book a source of inspiration.

I wish the readers to enjoy reading this rewarding book as I had!

Today, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are at the core of our industrial society. We rely heavily on cyber-physical systems in all areas of work and life.

Cyber-physical systems combine a cyber-part , i.e., a software-controlled computer system, with a physicalpart , i.e., a real system. The software operates the physical system. Examples of cyber-physical systems are cars, airplanes, trains, communications and energy infrastructures, heart pacemakers, medical diagnosis equipment, water treatment plants, and many more.