A Comprehensive Cyber Security Enhancing Strategy for Industrial Control Systems in Oil Industry

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) play a critical operational role in modern industrial sectors. Businesses depend on this automated control system for various operations to manage processes in the most benecial manner. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has enhanced ICS development and implementation. However, such automation advancement may also create many new opportunities for cyberattacks. Certain industries, such as the oil industry within Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, have begun renewing industrial control systems and related management to counteract cyber-attacks more eectively. The technological system framework which is herewith mainly taken as reference are the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. The analysis and synthesis made through this Ph.D. thesis account for both technical and human factors impinging on cyber-security system performance. A comprehensive approach has thus adopted to qualify relevant scientic technical contributions available from the literature, as well as to exploit outcomes of actual direct experiences of the involved companies. For such a comprehensive approach some basic analytical contributions have been rst provided for: i) qualifying related scientic technical advancements within the cyber-security literature; ii) performing subjective testing within the community of IT operators of ICS, concerned with made experience and human behavior aecting cyber-security. Such analysis is tuned with the objective of dening and adopting an enhanced comprehensive cyber-security policy within enterprise for ICS operation, which properly accounts also for relevance of human factors. Therefore, nal made contribution is just denition and proposal of appropriate guidelines for such a purpose. Research activity thus carried out is framed with an interdisciplinary context, as needed to innovate enterprise cyber-security management, including specic support and management of enterprise human resources.