Managing Cyber Risk from Concept To Operation
DOE National Cyber-Informed Engineering Strategy
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) Strategy seeks to guide energy sector efforts to incorporate cybersecurity practices into the design life cycle of engineered systems to reduce cyber risk.
Pursuant to congressional direction, the CESER-led Securing Energy Infrastructure Executive Task Force (SEI ETF) developed the National CIE Strategy, building on foundational work developed at Idaho National Laboratory.
I applaud the hard work of the Securing Energy Infrastructure Executive Task Force, CESER’s Cheri Caddy, and the entire CESER team for building on the great CIE work done by Idaho National Laboratory under the tremendous leadership by Zach Tudor, CISSP, NACD.DC.
– Puesh Kumar, Director, Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, U.S. Department of Energy
CIE Community of Practice
The Community of Practice (COP) quarterly meetings will start April 2023. The following two sub-groups meet monthly:
University Implementation
3rd Wednesday at 11 AM EST (starts Wednesday, February 15, 2023)
Developing Tools
4th Wednesday at 11 AM EST (starts Wednesday, February 22, 2023)
CIE is the WHAT and CCE is a HOW
The Department of Energy (DOE) and INL have developed a framework to guide the application of cybersecurity principles across the engineering design lifecycle. The Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) framework and body of knowledge drives the inclusion of cybersecurity as a foundational element of risk management for engineering of functions aided by digital technology. Consequence-Driven Cyber-Informed Engineering (CCE) is a rigorous process for applying CIE’s core principles to a specific organization, facility, or mission by identifying their most critical functions, methods and means an adversary would likely use to manipulate or compromise them, and determining the most effective means of removing or mitigating those risks.
CIE emphasizes “engineering out” potential risk in key areas, as well as ensuring resiliency and response maturity within the design of the engineered system. The following CIE framework shows some of the key focus areas and how the relate to the CCE Methodology. CCE walks an organization through core components of CIE in CCE’s 4-phase process to evaluate and remove or mitigate weaknesses in their critical functions.
Papers
Reducing the Cyber Threat to Digital Systems
INL Cyber Informed Engineering - 2017
Fermilab Colloquium - 2016
The Need for Cyber-informed Engineering Expertise for Nuclear Research Reactors
Presentations
Resilience Week 2020 - CIE
RSA Conference 2019 - Engineering Out the Cyber-Risk
CIE - Domestic Nuclear Cyber
Additional Resources
In this section we have listed supporting papers and presentations to the CIE foundations. In addition, there is supplemental information on complimentary and supporting efforts to the program.
Reducing the Cyber Threat to Digital Systems
Written by Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) staff with the assistance of Michael Assante, Robert Anderson and Rob Hoffman
Cyber threats are increasingly one of the major threat facing governments and industrial facility operators. One of the foundational issues that makes protection from such attacks increasingly difficult is the complexity of today’s networks and systems.
INL Cyber Informed Engineering - 2017
INL Report by Robert Anderson, Jacob Benjamin, Virginia Wright, Luis Quinones, Jonathan Paz
Published March 2017
A continuing challenge for engineers who utilize digital systems is to understand the impact of cyber-attacks across the entire product and program lifecycle. This is a challenge due to the evolving nature of cyber threats that may impact the design, development, deployment, and operational phases of all systems. Cyber Informed Engineering is the process by which engineers are made aware of both how to use their engineering knowledge to positively impact the cyber security in the processes by which they architect and design components and the services and security of the components themselves.
Fermilab Colloquium - 2016
Published June 2016
Written by Virginia Wright
Cyber informed engineering (CIE) is a body of knowledge and methodologies to characterize and mitigate risks presented by the introduction of digital technology in this formerly analog environment, focused on the application of traditional engineering techniques informed by an awareness of cyber-security threat and mitigation methods. This talk will describe how managers and engineers can participate in mitigating cyber-security risk in engineering projects throughout the design and installation life cycle.
The Need for Cyber-informed Engineering Expertise for Nuclear Research Reactors
International Conference on Research Reactors: Safe Management and Effective Utilization, 2015
Written by Rob Anderson and Joseph Price
This paper examines the need for cyber-informed engineering practices that encompass the entire engineering life cycle. Cyber-informed engineering, as referenced in this paper, is the inclusion of cybersecurity into the engineering process. This paper addresses several attributes of this process and the long-term goal of developing additional cyber-safety basis analysis and trust principles. With a culture of free information-sharing exchanges, and potentially a lack of security expertise, new risk analysis and design methodologies need to be developed to address this rapidly evolving (cyber) threatscape.
Resilience Week 2020 - CIE
RSA Conference 2019 - Engineering Out the Cyber-Risk
Better Securing the Now and the Next: Applying Engineering Base Principles to Achieve Demonstrably Better Cybersecurity
March 4, 2019
Presented by Andy Bochman and Virginia Wright
CIE - Domestic Nuclear Cyber
An introduction of CIE and how it pertains to nuclear energy and cybersecurity.
By Virginia Wright
