Multi-aspect security assessment of airport computer networks

Future airport computer network systems will provide advanced services to passengers, airlines, and maintenance personnel such as ubiquitous wireless access to critical services and increased physical security monitoring capabilities. To enable such advancements, different services will share the same support infrastructure such as hosts, wired and wireless networks, and access credentials. However, such integration will dramatically increase the complexity of airport networks. As the system complexity increases, manually analyzing the interconnections between components, their states and configurations to detect errors is going to be a challenge. Errors in configurations of components (e.g., firewalls or access credential) can create conditions that allow malicious users to potentially compromise systems and damage the infrastructure. This paper presents an architecture for security analysis suited for complex airport cyber-physical networks. Airport computer networks pose a challenge to the traditional IT security analyses: airport systems are heterogeneous entities created by the interconnections of multiple systems such as operation support systems for airlines and control networks for runway lights and distribution of fuel. This work provides a guide for the design of future cyber-security systems that can support the work of airport security officers in evaluating and maintaining the security of complex airport network systems.