Securing Convergent Ultra-large Scale Infrastructures

数字基础设施正以前所未有的规模实现融合和互联。无论是当前的关键国家基础设施，还是新兴的未来系统，如智慧城市、智能交通、高价值制造和工业4.0，都是如此。如此超大规模基础设施的网络安全面临前所未有的复杂性。各种遗留的和非遗留的软件和硬件组合在一起，为具有不同需求和不可预测的操作的数百万用户提供服务。复杂的供应链以及在不可信、部分可信或受损元素存在的情况下提供弹性操作的需求使这种复杂性更加复杂。对这种超大规模、组合安全基础设施的综合探索是迫切需要的，但在研究界还有待全面研究。当前，世界面临前所未有的复杂性、异质性和互联性带来的安全挑战，迫切需要转变思路，从零敲碎打转向综合适应。此外，将已建立的研究范式从设计安全的理想愿景转变为保护受损系统的现实是必要的。在存在不确定性的情况下，SCULI将推动这种范式向可预测的安全保证转变。这是解决在社会规模上提供安全保障这一重大挑战的关键——高度互联、动态、无结构、随需应变的系统和服务。为此，它将在四个基本但相互关联的研究挑战方面取得快速研究进展：超大规模的可预测性；如何在存在不确定性、动态性和人类行为（包括解决直接和间接依赖关系以及由此产生的系统风险）的情况下，引出、指定和验证服务组合的安全保证？超大规模的组合：如何在不同的、异构的不断发展的基础设施之间组合和编排安全供应，这些基础设施具有在很长的基础设施生命周期中发生变化的遗留和非遗留元素？超大规模的持续保证：当几个元素可能部分可信、受到攻击、易受攻击或受到损害时，如何以适当的速度对运行时的安全状态进行必要的准确性推理，以提供监督和信任的连续性？超大规模的事件响应：如何以一种方式协调事件响应，以解释组成系统中的异构事件响应实践，并以必要的速度和解决方案为人机决策提供态势感知？SCULI的研究进展将为未来几十年支撑社会的数字基础设施提供未来安全保障。从实际的角度来看，在这种高度分布式、独立（个体）但又相互依赖（集体）的背景下，基础设施是为行业和社会建立弹性数字骨干的唯一途径。从政策角度来看，这对英国的社会经济繁荣至关重要，正如国家网络战略（2021年12月）所反映的那样。从公民和公共话语的角度来看，这是在确保社会规模基础设施安全时，将网络安全叙事从恐惧、不确定性和怀疑转变为可预测、持续保证和负责任决策的关键。

Digital infrastructures are seeing convergence and connectivity at unprecedented scale. This is true for both current critical national infrastructures and emerging future systems, e.g., smart cities, intelligent transportation, high-value manufacturing and Industry 4.0. Cyber security of such ultra-large scale infrastructures faces unprecedented complexity. Diverse legacy and non-legacy software and hardware compose on-the-fly to deliver services to millions of users with varying requirements and unpredictable actions. This complexity is compounded by intricate supply-chains and the need to deliver resilient operations in the presence of untrusted, partially trusted or compromised elements. The integrated exploration of such ultra-large scale, compositionally secure infrastructures is an imperative need, yet to be comprehensively scoped in the research community. There is an urgent need to pivot our perspective away from piecemeal solutions to one that takes a compositional, adaptive view, anticipating and addressing the security challenges arising from hitherto unprecedented complexity, heterogeneity and connectivity. Furthermore, shifting established research paradigms from an ideal vision of security-by-design to the reality of securing-a-compromised-system is imperative.SCULI will drive this paradigm-shift to predictable security assurances in the presence of uncertainty. This holds the key to addressing the grand challenge of provisioning security at the societal scale—highly interconnected, dynamic, structureless, on-demand systems and services. To do so, it will deliver rapid research advances in four fundamental but interlinked research challenges:Predictability at ultra-large scale: How to elicit, specify and validate security assurances for service composition in the presence of uncertainty, dynamism and human behaviour (including addressing direct and indirect dependencies and resulting systemic risks)?Composition at ultra-large scale: How to compose and orchestrate security provision across diverse and heterogeneous evolving infrastructures with legacy and non-legacy elements that change over a long infrastructure lifespan?Continual assurance at ultra-large scale: How to reason, to requisite levels of accuracy and at an appropriate pace, about the security state at runtime to provide continuity of oversight and trust, when several elements may be partially trusted, under attack, vulnerable or compromised?Incident response at ultra-large scale: How to orchestrate incident response in a manner that accounts for heterogeneous incident response practices in constituent systems and provides situational awareness at the necessary pace and resolution for human-machine decision-making?SCULI's research advances will deliver future security provision in digital infrastructures underpinning society for the next several decades. From a practical standpoint, embracing the challenges of delivering security in the context of such highly distributed, independent (individually) yet co-dependent (collectively), infrastructures is the only way to build a resilient digital backbone for industry and society. From a policy perspective, this is critical to the UK's socio-economic prosperity as reflected in the National Cyber Strategy (December 2021). From a citizens and public discourse perspective, this is key to transforming the narrative on cyber security from fear, uncertainty and doubt to predictable, continual assurance, and accountable decision-making when securing societal-scale infrastructures.