Processes for Securing Water Resource Management Systems (PSWaRMS)

PSWaRMS investigates security processes for cyber-physical systems found in utilities, focusing on the water sector. The approach will be also be monitored and assessed alongside another utility company.

Utilities form part of the critical national infrastructure (CNI), and a deep understanding of the threats they face and the ways of mitigating those threats is a national priority. This project recognises the commonality of concerns across the CNI sector and so seeks to build a generalisable approach through detailed, practical work.

Working with operators of CNI, this project brings together knowledge and capability formed from existing PETRAS projects focussing on AI-based solutions for securing IoT systems. The project is a collaboration between two leading universities in cybersecurity (UCL, UoW), a leading water company (Yorkshire Water), a cybersecurity service specialist (Nexor) specialising in security of CNI, and an electricity company (Northern Powergrid) to focus on research in the use of AI capabilities to support proactive security management, and on the use of a moving target approach (randomised network control reconfiguration) for securing critical networks, to reduce the likely success of attacks.

The PSWaRMS academic team from University College London and the University of Warwick recently visited the user partner, Yorkshire Water, to understand how water systems operate. Please see images from their visit below.