Secure Links: Secure-by-Design Communications in IEC 61499 Industrial Control Applications

Increasing automation and external connectivity in industrial control systems (ICS) demand a greater emphasis on software-level communication security. In this article, we propose a secure-by-design development method for building ICS applications, where requirements from security standards like ISA/IEC 62443 are fulfilled by design-time abstractions called secure links. Proposed as an extension to the IEC 61499 development standard, secure links incorporate both light-weight and traditional security mechanisms into applications with negligible effort. Applications containing secure links can be automatically compiled into fully IEC 61499-compliant software. Experimental results show secure links significantly reduce design and code complexity and improve application maintainability and requirements traceability.